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ADDRESSES 



ON 



^ THE CIVIL SABBATH 



FROM A 



I Patriotic and Humanitarian Standpoint, 

WITH APPENDIX CONTAINING 

I SABBATH LAWS OF ALL THE STATES, 

Judicial Decisions, Replies to Seventh-Day Adventists, Etc., 

BY 

I Wilbur F. Crafts, 

Autho7' of " The Sabbath for Man,'' etc. 



Your work :f kept up and kept pure will lead a ransomed nation of slaves— slaves to our modern 
civilization—to a i exodus from the house of bondage. The Great Liberator send you victory.— i^yow letter 
of Rev. John Gritton, D. D., Sec. Lord's Day Observance Society, London. 

Experience and observation convince me that all who work witb hand or brain require the rest which 
a general observance of the Sabbath only can secure. The philanthropist and the Christian may approach 
the subject from different directions ; but whether Ave regard man as an animal or an immortal, we should 
unite in securing for him the rest that body and spirit both demand for their best condition and highest 
good. Those who do not find the Divine command in the Book cannot fail to find it in the man. — Presi- 
dent Benjamin Hariiison, in letter dated June 3, 1889, to Paris Sabbath Congress. 

Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are upheld, not from any right of the Government to legis- 
late for the promotion of religious observances, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical 
and moral debasement that comes from uriTnterrupted labor. Such laws have always been deemed bene- 
ficial and merciful laws, especially to the poor and dependent, to the laborers in our factories and work- 
shops and in the heated rooms of our cities ; and their validity has been sustained by the highest courts of 
the statefi.—Unanimmis decision Supreme Court of the United States, delivered by Mr. Justice Field, March 
16,1885. 113U. S. 710. 



AUTHORS' PUBLISHING CO. 
102 Nassau Street, New York. 



Copyrighted, 1890, by W. F. Crafts. 



SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF THESE DOCUMENTS. 

There are seven reasons for the Rest Day, reasons why it should be observed and 
preserved : 

First — Because it is a law of nature. Second — Because it is a law of the State. 
Third — Because it is a law of the Church. Fourth — Because it is a law of Apos- 
tolic example. Fifth — Because it is a law of Christ. Sixth — Because it is a law of 
the world's Sinaitic constitution. Seventh — Because it is a law of Eden, where the- 
"Sabbath was made for man." 

The author of these documents accepts all the planks of this platform, but gladly 
cooperates in Sabbath reform with any who accept even one of them. In " The- 
Sabbath for Man" all of the above propositions are defended. 

These documents deal only with the civil aspects of the Sabbath, on which ther 
is substantial agreement among all good citizens, in defense of the Rest Day against 
the attacks of those who would open it to toil oi' dissipation to gratify their avarice 
or their lusts, and their unconscious allies, the advocates of the Saturday Sabbath, 

Of "The Secular Ground of the Sabbath" Rev. George Elliott, D.D., says admir- 
ably : " Even the religious thinker cannot be displeased to have the structure of 
his faith rest on the ground, although its pinnacles may pierce the clouds" (" Abid- 
ing Sabbath," p. 79). Of the same line of argument Rev. Will C. Wood says : 
** From eternity God knew the benefits of Sabbath rest. By the law of benevolence, 
as He discerned the benefits of such a sacred Rest-Day, He was obligated to ordain 
it; by that same law we are obligated to observe it, not because we discern its 
benefits, but because God, by commanding it, tells us that He does discern its bene- 
fits. Yet, while as ever-finite beings, remaining under obligation to obey God sim- 
ply because it is He who commands, we come more and more to obey, like God,, 
because we see the benefits" ("Heaven Once a Week," pp. 1, 2). 

The use of the word "Sabbath" in these documents on the c^v^7 aspects of the 
subject calls for an explanatory paragraph. Sabbath is used rather than Sunday 
for two reasons : First, because the word Sabbath has the right of way historically, 
being the oldest term to designate a weekly rest day ; second, because it mphilologi- 
cally a less religious term, for while Sunday means a day for worshipping the Sun. 
Sabbath means simply rest, not religion. The whole seventh year of the Jewish 
System was called Sabbath. It was not all worship. Sabbath means simply a. 
period of release from routine, a time of orderly rest, and so is a far more suitable 
word to describe what is intended by our Sabbath laws than the word that is so 
inseparably associated with the toil and dissipation of the " Continental Sunday." 

Accordingly Sunday is used in these documents, except in quotacions, only to 
express perversions of the Day, such as "Sunday work" and "Sunday amuse- 
ments.", 

In England the word Sunday is generally used by those who wish to make it a 
holiday ; " Sabbath " or "Lord's Day " by those who would preserve it as a day of 
opportunity for rest and religion. " Lord's Day " and " Christian Sabbath " are the 
suitable tei ms for the religious aspect of the subject, but " Civil Sabbath " means- 
the Civil Rest Day, and so exactly expresses the American idea, which enforces 
only the rest, the cessation of labor and business, and leaves the people to devote 
the day to religion, or not, as they choose. 

The longer documents are not essays, but addresses for the people — and in part 
by the people, as will be seen. I have not thought best to erase from the reports 
the expressions of public sentiment, which are an important factor in the solution 
of Sabbath problems. 

W. J. C. Berrj^, Librarian of the New York Association of the Bar, has aided in 
editing for these documents what we believe to be the first complete collection of 
the Sabbath laws of the United States and the important Court decisions upon 
them, giving text of each law, and decisions in form for legal use, all brought down 
to date. I have added some suggestions of amendments and other notes. 

Such a collection is greatly needed, not by lawyers alone, but also by ministers 
and other friends of the Sabbath, who can seldom tell exactly what their Sabbath 
law forbids and what it permits. 




New York City, April 4, 1891. 

For Contents and Topical Index, See Pages 127, 128. 






^ 



5 ^^!^ 



QJ 



-^ THE SABBATH IMPERILLED BUT NOT SURRENDERED 

^ The Interior, Chicago : " Sabbath 



observance is undeniably g-aining- 
ground." 

TJie Advance, Chicago: "AVe recall 
no time when the managers of railroads 
were apparently so willing, and in some 
cases, so eager, to lessen Sunday traffic 
Agitation is bearing its fruit." 

The Evangelist, New York: " There 
are not wanting some signs of a health- 
ful reaction." 

The Independent, Burlington, Vt. : 
" The movement seems to gain strength 
everywhere." 
' State Register, Des Moines, la, : 
"There is plainly a reaction in public 
sentiment in favor of refraining from all 
unnecessary work on the Sabbath. A 
few years ago business began to follow 
pleasure in encroachments upon the day 
of rest, and a vast amount of work has 
been done on Sunday that has been 
called nf accsn vv. only because habit had 
seemed to make it such. Within the 
last few months there has been a mani- 
fest change in public feeling on this sub- 
ject. The absolute importance, from a 
physical, if not religious, standpoint, of 
taking one rest day in seven, is forcing 
itself upon the public mind. Men are 
beginning to see that they can do better 
work themselves, and can get better 
service from their employees, when they 
give the mind and body the regular re- 
laxation of one day's rest." 

Charles Worcester Clark, (in At- 
lantic Monthly, Sept., 1889.): ''In in- 
sisting on liberty of action as well as of 
conscience, we overlook the fact that 
our manner of using our Sunday freedom 
often deprives others of theirs. A hun- 
dred years ago, or even fifty years ago, 
there was little danger of this. Then 
nearly every man was his own master, 
and could work or not on Sunday, as he 
pleased. In our present social system, 
the employed are the multitude, the 
employers the few. The enlargement 



and concentration of industry have re- 
duced to a small proportion of the whole 
community the number of those who 
can decide the question of Sunday labor 
for themselves. In this way it has 
naturally come about that the avarice 
of employers, combined with the selfish- 
ness of the public, has been gradually 
depriving more and more of the workers, 
and often the hardest workers, of their 
rest-day. If our Sunday, then, is to be 
preserved, it must have the protection 
of the law. Yet experience has shown 
clearly enough that law avails little 
without the support of public sentiment. 
That the great majority of the Ameri- 
can people do appreciate their daj'' of 
rest, and desire to protect it, I think is 
beyond dispute. The petition lately 
presented to Congress, known as the 
" fourteen-million petition," though it 
had by no means that number of actual 
signers, probably represented the senti- 
ments of almost every one of those whose 
delegates or representatives signed it for 
them, as well as of those who personally 
affixed their names." 

Commercial Gazette, Cinciniiati : 
"Unquestionably the business world is 
coming to the conclusion that the Rest 
Day is an economical feature that can 
not safely be disregarded. Man needs 
rest, machinery needs rest, the brute 
creation needs rest, land needs rest. 
The principle is broad, deep, enduring." 

Toledo Blade : " Each year finds more 
Sunday labor done in our cities, and the 
tendency in this direction gains mo- 
mentum steadily. It is time to call a 
halt." 

Christian Advocate, New York : 
" Eternal contention is the price of pre- 
serving anything from the encroach- 
ments of selfishness and license." 

Bishop Kingsley (on return from 
extended tour): "Brethren, there are 
a good many hard day's work between 
this and the Millenium." 



PROGRESS OF SABBATH REFORM IN 
THE UNITED STATES IN 1889. 



An Address by Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, 
IN Association Hall, 86th Street, 
New York City, Dec. 29th, 1889 : 

At Jabez Bunting's funeral, when the 
officiating- minister remarked, as is usual 
on such occasions, " There are no more 
such great and good men left," an eccen- 
tric but veracious woman exclaimed 
aloud, "Thank God, thafs a lie.'''' The 
same remark is appropriate when any 
pessimist moans, " The Sabbath is gone." 
"Thank God, that's a lie." "He that 
ploweth, should plow in hope." " We are 
saved b^^ hope." We are lost by despair. 
Truth has no greater foe than the distrust 
of some of its friends in its power. When 
David, pursued by Saul, had no other 
encouragement, " he encouraged himself 
in God." He sang, " The Lord reigneth, 
let the earth rejoice." In a storm at 
sea, a trembhng woman asked the cap- 
tain, "Is there any danger?" He re- 
pUed, " We must trust in God," at which 
she exclaimed, in terror, "Has it come 
to that?" It has not "come to that," 
in the sense she meant it, in Sabbath re- 
form. Joshua received almost simulta- 
neously from God and the people the 
message, " Be strong and of a good cour- 
age." So to-day not only the promises of 
God but the events of the j^ear in 
Sabbath reform cry with a thousand 
tongues to its friends, "Be of good cour- 
age." 

No other year of the last twenty-five 
has seen so many petitions against Sun- 
day work, the organization of so many 
Sabbath associations, the fighting of so 
many brave battles against Sunday 
saloons, the winning of so many victories 
under the banner inscribed, "The Bar- 
ber's. Sunday," the writing of so many 
articles and letters, and the utterance 
<^/t so many fearless addresses and ser- 
''mons, in behalf of tliis imperiled day, as 
the 3^ear now about to close. This is the 
Annus Mirahilis, the year of wonders, 
in Sabbath reform — and in Sabbath- 
breaking also. 

Let us glance at some facts of the 
year that show that the Sabbath, though 
imperiled, is not surrendered. 



New England has not in this reform 
kept its usual place, at the head, but 
leads the other end of the class. The 
real New England has "gone West," 
and the Central States are the "hub," 
nay more, the heart, of the country, 
morally as well as geographically. I 
do not mean to say that the Sabbaths of 
New England are as bad as those of 
Chicago. Vermont is the only State in 
which the Woman's Christian Temper- 
iance Union has no Sabbath Observance 
Superintendent, the reason being, that 
whatever may be the wrongs in Vermont, ^ 
Sabbath-breaking is not one of them. 
This can not be said, however, of other 
New England States, although none of 
them are as far down the toboggan slide 
as States farther West. The point I make 
is that New England is in peril from 
Sunday work and Sunday dissipation, 
and is doing next to nothing to save it- 
self or the country from this danger. 
It seems to be sliding in its sleep, 
waiting to be waked up by a smashup 
at th e foot of the hill, like Cincinnati. In 
Sabbath reform. New Englan/^ ^:s slowly 
retreating, while the Central States are 
charging the foe. The only conference 
of ministers, so far as I know, that has 
declined to indorse the petition to Con- 
gress against Sunday trains and Sunday 
mails was convened in New England. 
Massachusetts passes by on the other 
side, indifferent to the wounds inflicted on 
her Sabbath law, which, not long ago, 
fell among thieves, who mangled it and 
stripped it, in the interest of greed and 
lust, and left it more than half dead be- 
cause every drop of equity had flowed 
out of it. It forbids the poor to open 
their penny shops on the Sabbath, but 
authorizes the railroad millionaires to 
sell their tickets and keep their em- 
ployees at work. ''God save the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts." New Eng- 
land is the only section of our country 
where you can find half a dozen contig- 
uous States, none of which have organ- 
ized for the defense of the Sabbath. 
New Hampshire is the only one of her 
States that has yet even decided to fall 
into line. 



But even in New England the Sabbath 
is by no means surrendered. A repre- 
sentative of tlie American Sabbath Un- 
ion has been welcomed to leading pulpits 
of Bridgeport, AVorcester and Boston, 
and a Sabbath Committee was constitu- 
ted in the latter city, whose history or 
obituary' is yet to be written. 

The following action was taken by the 
Congregational National Council at Wor- 
cester, Mass., October, 1889: "Resolved, 
That this Council rejoice in the rising 
tide of interest in the matter of a better 
observance of the Lord's Day, in the 
multiplication of State and local organi- 
zations for" the promotion of this object, 
and that we will use our utmost endeav- 
or to secure such National legislation as 
shall prevent all unnecessary^ labor in 
connection with the United States mail 
and military service and interstate com- 
merce on the Lord's Day." 

Connecticut has held, for another 
year, with only slight loss, its advanced 
place as "the banner State" in reduc- 
tion of 

SUNDAY W^ORK ON RAILROADS. 

The banner, indeed, is not on the 
heights, but in the marsh. For railroad 
purposes in Connecticut, as for saloon 
purposes in Texas, wiser-than-Solomon 
State legislators have decided that not 
twenty-four hours, but a sacred seven, 
half on each side of noon, shall constitute 
the Rest Day. Freight trains, with cer- 
tain needless exceptions, are forbidden 
from sunrise to sunset, but such trains as 
may be worked by "Mercy and Neces- 
sity," the Railroad Commissioners may 
permit on Sabbath morning, and so 
milk trains and newspaper trains are 
allowed, on the ground, I suppose, that 
it is as necessary for men to have their 
scandal, fresh as for babies to have fresh 
milk. Even Connecticut's star, you per- 
ceive, does not shine with unclouded 
light, but there is at least circumstan- 
tial evidence that the Sabbath is not 
there surrendered in the fact that 
they are able to defend, year after 
year, the ten thousand railroad men 
from whom even their imperfect law 
struck the iron chains of tlieir Sunday 
slavery. 



LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM OF GREAT CITIES. 

Best of all tokens for good from New. 
England is the fact that in Boston the 
Sabbath is no longer the pocket borough 
of the Saloon. This is due to the fact 
that the State of Massachusetts has 
learned, what all other States that con- 
tain great cities must learn — at last if 
not at first — that it will not do to give 
home rule to a cancer. The city that 
elected the sluggers' friend to be its 
mayor, at the same time elected the 
State to be its real ruler. Putting the 
lance to the very root of the disease, 
Massachusetts took upon herself the ap- 
pointment of Boston's Police Commis- 
sioners, and so of her police. *The law- 
less had been saying for years, "Let us 
appoint the city's police and we care not 
who makes its laws." State law is 
now made effective by State police. The 
State, as it were, has sent maps to the 
city fathers — stepfathers they are — to 
teach them a geography lesson they had 
failed to learn, namely, that Boston is 
in the State of Massachusetts and sub- 
ject to its laws. We often hear it inti- 
mated that this or that State law can 
not be enforced in a large city because 
the city council has refused or failed to 
re-enact it into a city ordinance. As 
well say that a group of children 
are not bound to obey a parent's order 
because thej^ have not met and ratified 
it. The Massachusetts Law and Order 
League, of which L. Edwin Dudley, of 
Boston, is Secretary, through the lever- 
age of this State law, which the League 
was largely influential in securing, have 
been able to close the saloons of Boston 
on the Sabbath, front and rear, to an 
extent that is rarely equalled. Such a 
law and such a League is needed for 
every large city. 

Turning to what are absurdly called 
"The Middle States," which are realh- 
the breast bone of our territory, under 
the New England head, the record is 
only slightly better than New England's. 
New York, like Massachusetts has left her 
mangled Sabbath law through another 
year unhealed. Barred windows would 
have been appropriate for the Capitol 
in 1883, when the " inmates " (not true 



legislators) committed high crimes 
against hum.anity and equity, after first 
forbidding Sunday toil and traffic in 
general, by permitting the sale of 
tobacco, newspapers, fruit and confec- 
tionery all day, and food until 10 A. M. 
Even in the " Sunny South," in Summer, 
it has not been found neccessary to keep 
the journeymen bakers and grocery 
boys toiling through the morning of the 
Eest Da-y ; much less is it necessary in 
New York. I spent the first Sabbath of 
the year, and another since, investiga- 
ting New York streets, and there is 
scarcely any kind of toil or traffic that 
I did not find in progress somewhere. I 
started out to w^rite down a list of the 
places open, but found it would be easier 
to make a record of the places closed. 

ONE IMPORTANT VICTORY FOR SABBATH 
REFORM IN NEW YORK CITY 

is the recent payment to the Metro- 
politan Museum of the $400,000 appro- 
priated to it by the State Legislature, 
which struck out a condition that it 
should open on Sunday — a condition 
which the Mayor, attempting to swell 
into a whole legislature, restored on his 
own authority, but, after much bull-doz- 
ing of the trustees, has had to drop at 
last. . It is to be hoped that he and 
other mayors will cease their attempts 
to veto State laws. 

A movement promoted by some own- 
ers of New York horse car lines, to have 
the companies cut off one Sabbath per 
fortnight as a morsel of rest for the em- 
ployees, with a corresxjonding reduction 
of wages, seems to have satisfied neither 
the men nor the managers, and the 
public has heard of no result. It is 
not fair to make a man choose be- 
tween two dollars for home comforts 
and his duty to rest. Men do better, 
if not more, work, with a Sabbath of 
rest than without it, and therefore ought 
to have as much pay. In fact, the law 
ought to allow no one, even in works of 
necessity and mercy, to hire another or 
be hired for more than six days in any 
one week, one whole twenty-four hours, 
or two half daj^s being allowed for rest, 
which would give all men their full 
week's wages for six days' work. To- 



ronto proves that Sunday street cars are 
not works of necessity. If the majority 
that rule in our land think otherwise, 
they should at least give every employee 
twenty-four hours a week of release, a 
part of it on the Sabbath— for instance, 
one shift resting from 1 P. M. of Satur- 
day to 1 P. M. of Sabbath, and then the 
other to 1 P. M. of Monday. 

In contrast to the failure just men- 
tioned, we note the success of Col. El- 
liott F. Shepard, in stopping the Sunday 
work of the 5th Avenue Stage Line. The 
transportation business of this country 
is a car of Juggernaut, under whose 
wheels a million and a half are being 
crushed by Sunday work. It is pleasant 
to find one " Stagery " that will not pull 
at its ropes. In this connection, it should 
be mentioned that the Binghamton 
Sabbath Association, one of the most 
efficient local Sabbath Associations in 
the land, is making a specialty of " Sun- 
day Rest for Railroad ]\Ien," circulating 
a paper so headed, and otherwise seeking 
to check this mighty and destructive car. 

In the observance of the Rest Day, the 
"Keystone State " is indeed at the high- 
est point in the arch of States. (The 
whole arch is, however, a low one.) 
While other States have surrendered 
part of their Sunday laws, under th3 
attacks of selfishness, Pennsylvania re- 
tains the viagna cliarta of her toilers 
intact, and — what is more — enforces it. 
Among the large cities of our country, 
Pennsylvania's three chief cities, Phila- 
delphia, Pittsburgh andScranton, though 
their largest room is " room for improve- 
ment," are unequaled in the orderliness 
and restfulness of their Sabbaths. Phila- 
delphia's Sabbath Association is the 
oldest, and one of the best, in the land. 
Piiiladelphia's Ledger, tlie best morning- 
paper in our country, equaled in quality 
by none, and in financial prosperity by 
only one, has shown that Sunday editions 
are not necessary to success. In the same 
city, the greatest merchant in the world 
has proved that even worldly winning 
does not require Sunday advertising. 
And the Delaware, Lackawanna and 
Western Railway, whose headquarters 
are at Scranton, though it has not yet 




attained perfection on this point, has 
the best record of any trunk hne in the 
matter of reducing- 

SUNDAY TRAINS, 

largely through the influence of Hon. 
Wm. E. Dodge. 

The Pennsylvania Railway is also to be 
commended for introducing the recent 
movement to reduce Sunday raih-oad 
^vork, in which nearly a score of rail- 
roads — notably the Vanderbilt lines — 
have joined, and b}^ which, as Chief 
j^rthur of the Brotherhood of Locomo- 
tive Engineers estimates, at least 75,000 
railroad men have this year been added 
to the list of those who rest on the 
Sabbath, and four times as many in their 
homes have been gladdened. This, of 
course, is only a beginning — hardly more 
than a confession that tlie railroad cor- 
porations, in this Sunday work, are on 
the wrong track. It is like the case of 
the tippler who finds that his beer makes 
him '' dizzy," and so cuts down his daily 
allowance from thirtyglasses to twenty- 
seven. What we want in this matter of 
Sunday work is total abstinence. 

It will be appropriate to mention here, 
though belonging to the whole country, 
as one of the pleasant surprises of the 
year, a group of confessions from sixty- 
five railroad officials. In response to a 
list of questions, these presidents, super- 
intendents, managers and other liigh 
officials of the railroads, with only nine 
exceptions, admit that there is " more 
Sunday work done by railroads than is 
necessary ; " that the work could be 
*' lessened without loss either to the 
roads or to the public ; " that " the rail- 
road work now done in seven days could 
be done in six"— some would make 
exceptions for perisliable freight and 
live stock. Many of them believe " the 
work could be done better in six days 
than in seven, because of the better con- 
dition of the engineers and other em- 
ployees." Best of all, thirty-one declare 
that there is no real obstacle to "the 
complete suspension of interstate Sun- 
day trains." The answers of most of 
these indicate that they see no obstacle 
to stopping all Sunday trains. One ruil- 
Toad president concisely proclaims the 



remedy for this needless Sunday work : 
' ' The only way is to have a special act 
of Congress making it a general law." 
Many of these officials have signed the 
petitions for such a law. Here certainly 
are several wonders. It is a grateful 
surprise to many that the railroad offi- 
cials are not generally to join with the 
infidels and saloonists and Sunday 
papers and Seventh day Adventists in 
resisting the plea of the workingmen 
for a Sunday Rest Law. 

The best Sabbath -keeping section of 
the United States lies along our Eastern 
Coast between Delaware- and Missis- 
sippi. This is partly due to the fact 
that so few noxious weeds are trans- 
ported to that section from Castle 
Garden. Politicians there have no " Ger- 
man vote " to fear. Southern inechanics 
are mostly Americans, and the negro 
laborers are friends, not l^foes, of the 
Sabbath. 

THE SOUTH IS "SOLID" FOR THE SAB- 
BATH. 

Rum and railroads, however, with the 
aid of the United States mails, are mak- 
ing ugly breaches in the wall of Sab- 
bath rest, and the " New South' s " man- 
ufacturing attractions bring new perils 
with new gains, which make it import- 
ant for the friends of the Sabbath there 
to organize more thoroughly for its 
defense. 

Baltimore calls to mind the National 
Tjay Congress of 

ROMAN CATHOLICS, 

which, after correspondence and confer- 
ence with the Amerian Sabbath Union, 
passed its famous resolution in favor of 
cooperation with Protestants in Sabbath 
reform, of which the following is a full 
and correct copy : 

"There are many Christian issues in 
which Catholics could come together 
with non-Catholics and shape civil legis- 
lation foi* the public weal. In spite of re- 
buff and injustice, and overlooking zeal- 
otry, we should seek alliance with non- 
Catholics for proper Sunday observance. 
Without going over to the Judaic Sab- 
bath, we can bring the masses over to the 
moderation of the Christian Sunday. To 
effect this, we must set our faces sternly 



against the sale of intoxicating- beverages 
on Sunday. The corrupting influence of 
saloons in politics, thecrhne and pauper- 
ism resulting from excessive drinking, re- 
quire legislative restriction which we can 
aid in procuring by joining our influence 
with that of the other enemies of intem- 
perance. Let us resolve that drunkenness 
shall be made odious, and give practical 
encouragement and support to Catholic 
temperance societies. We favor the pas- 
sage and enforcement of laws rigidly 
clo^ng saloons on Sunday and forbidding 
the sale of liquors to minors and intoxi- 
cated persons." 

Washington is associated with four of 
the wonders of the year — one on the 
dark side — the darkest of the year — 

INAUGURATION SUNDAY. 

Is it not a wonder that the coming to 
power of a Sabbath-keeping ' President 
should have been celebrated by an at- 
tack upon the American Sabbath, not 
by soldiers and citizens only, but by 
Congress also. The greatest wonder of 
all is that the Christian men of Congress 
did not, as on a former occasion, prevent 
a Sunday session, by denying the right 
of Congress to require Sunday work of 
any of its members, and retiring in a 
body and so destroying the quorum. 
Instead of such a protest, there was 
only the shallow jest, called up by a 
Sunday motion relating to the Sunday 
Rest Bill that it was not proper to 
work on such legislation on the Sab- 
bath. 

It is not generally known that Con- 
gress publishes by the Sunday toil of 
government employees, the most inex- 
cusable of all Sunday papers, the Sunday 
edition of the Congressional Record, 
which has not even the poor excuse of 
furnishing news and light reading, for 
it contains only the Saturday proceed- 
ings of Congress, which our Statesman 
would have as much time to consider as 
those of other days if it was issued on 
Monday. Congress is responsible also 
for the only Sunday delivery of ordinary 
mail that can be found in the land. 
Wagons drive about the streets of 
Washington on Sabbath morning, car- 
rying to Congressmen, who certainly 



need a day for rest, if not religion, the 
letters of their constituents calling for 
seeds and " spoils." These wagons are 
not driven by uniformed carriers, but it 
is doubtless this precedent that has led 
to the Sunday delivery of ordinary mail 
by carriers at the hotels of Washington 
while hotels elsewhere can get their 
Sunday mail only by sending for it. This 
custom will have to be stopped or ex- 
tended to an impartial Sunday delivery 
for all citizens, with unmerciful and un- 
necessary Sunday toil for all carriers. 

Thank God, if we have not a Sabbath- 
keeping Congress, we have at least a 
Sabbath-keeping President and cabinet. 

The following is the full text of the 
President's Proclamation against 

SUNDAY WORK IN THE ARMY. . 

General Orders, No. 50. 
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, 
Adjutant General's Office, 
Washington, June 12, 1889. 
The following order of the President 
is published for the information and 
guidance of the Army, viz. : 

Executive Mansion, June 7, 1889. 
In November, 1862, President Lincoln 
quoted the words of Washington to sus- 
tain his own views, and announced in a 
general order that — 

" The President, Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army and Navy, desires and en- 
joins the orderly observance of the Sab- 
bath by the ofliicers and men in the mili- 
tary and naval service. The importance 
for man and beast of the prescribed 
weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christ- 
ian soldiers and sailors, a becoming def- 
erence to the best sentiment of a Christ- 
ian people, and a due regard for the Di- 
vine Will demand that Sunday labor in 
the Army and Navy be reduced to the 
measure of strict necessity." 

The truth so concisely stated cannot 
be too faithfully regarded, and the pres- 
sure to ignore it is far less now than in 
the midst of war. To recall the kindly 
and considerate spirit of the orders is- 
sued by these great men in the most try- 
ing times of our history, and to promote 
contentment and efficiency, the Presi- 
dent directs that Sunday morning in- 
spection will be merely of the dress and 
general appearance, without arms ; and 



the more complete inspection under 

arms, with all men present, as required 

in par. 950, A. R., 1889, will take place 

on Saturday. 

BENJ. HARRISON. 

By the President: 

Redfield Proctor, 

Secretary of War. 
By command of Maj. Gen. Schofield: 

. J. C. Kelton, 
Official: Adjutant-General. 

We need a law of Congress to make 
tliis reform permanent, lest it shall ex- 
pire, as did a similar proclamation of 
Andrew Jackson, with the expiration of 
the authority of its author. 

To our "regulars," Sunday parades 
are not even Sunday amusement. They 
are " works of gain," and as such should 
be intermitted on the Sabbath out of re- 
gard to the soldier's right to rest and his 
rights of conscience. When there is 
neither war nor insurrection, no Sunday 
work, except necessary guard duty, 
should be required of soldiers. Wash- 
ington and Lincoln and Lee, even in the 
midst of war, ordered that their soldiers 
should be relieved of all unnecessary 
work on the Sabbath. In these " piping 
times of peace " the United States army 
and navy are small affairs, but a correct 
example on the part of the Government 
as an employer is a very great matter. 

postmaster general wanamaker 

has won golden opinions, even among 
political opponents, especially in the 
South, for what he has done to diminish 
Sunday work. He has emancipated not 
a few from Sunday slavery by the four 
reductions he has already made — in the 
Department, on " Star routes," on pleas- 
ure routes, and in the money order divi- 
sion— and will doubtless do much more 
in this line ; but, in any case, law will be 
needed, if onl}' to make his reforms out- 
last his own term. 

In his first report to Congress, which 
contains two pages on " Sunday Mails " 
(pp. 23-4), he plainly intimates that re- 
ductions of Sunday work in the post- 
offices will be very difficult and very 
slight so long as the railroads are re- 
quired to dump their loads of mail into 



the offices on the Sabbath as on other 
days. 

Washington also brings to mind three 
other encouragements of the year. 
When the 50th Congress adjourned on 
the 4th of March it had received peti- 
tions for a law against needless Sunday 
work in the mail and military service 
and in interstate commerce, and in the 
District of Columbia and the Terri- 
tories, that represented more than 

TEN MILLIONS OF ADULT PETITIONERS, 

besides Cardinal Gibbons, whose name 
certainly weighs much in such matters 
whatever it counts. This petition is 
surely a wonder, being the largest ever 
presented to any government, and the 
only one in which labor organizations 
and churches of all creeds have gener- 
ally united. 

Since the 4th of March the army of 
petitioners has been increasing daily. 
The most important of the new endorse- 
ments are those of three out of the four 
chief ecclesiastical bodies of the South, 
namely the Southern Presbyterian and 
the Cumberland Presbyterian Assem- 
blies and the Southern Baptist Conven- 
tion, which followed the example of the 
Northern Presbyterian Assembly and 
various Methodist Conferences that had 
taken like action during the previous 
year. The resolutions of the three 
Southern bodies this year are as follows : 

The Sabbath Observance report adopt- 
ed by the General Assembly of the 
Cumberland Presbyterian Church, on 
May 23d, 1889, contained the following : 
" Expressions of sympathy with the peti- 
tion to Congress for a law against Sab- 
bath work, so far as the jurisdiction of 
the general government extends." 

The Southern Presbyterian Assembly,, 
on May 25th, '' Resolved, That we favor 
the signing by our people the petitions 
to Congress for a law against Sunday 
work, except works of necessity and 
mercy, so far as the jurisdiction of the 
general government extends, with the 
usual exceptions in favor of those who 
observe another day of the week as 
Sabbath." 

The Southern Baptist Convention, 



10 



representing a round million of meni- 
Ijers, on May 14th took this action : 
*' Whereas, the American Sabbath 
Union is laboring to secure such National 
legislation as will allow to all employees 
of the National Government one day in 
seven as a day of rest: therefore Resolved, 
That we fully sympathize with this im- 
portant object of the American Sabbath 
Union, and request our brethren to 
promote its work, so far as may be 
practicable." 

The Southern Methodists have given 
abundant evidence, in the co-operation 
of their bishops and pastors and churches 
in this movement, that when their 
General Conference meets next May 
it will add to the endorsements of the 
other Southern denominations its grand 
Amen, 

Another wonder, closely allied to this, 
is the fact that the last Congress pub- 
lished a larger number of the hearings 
on the Sunday Rest Bill (42,000) than it 
published of any other j)ublic document, 
except the Agricultural ■ Reports. That 
the six-day laws, the Sabbath laws, are 
the most important part of labor reform 
in the estimation of the people is shown 
by the fact that their multitudinous 
letters to Senators and Representatives 
brought them twelve thousand more 
copies than had been issued at public 
expense of the most popular of preced- 
ing labor documents. 

It is said in excuse for Sunday trains 
that the people " demand them." Why 
do not some of these apologists discover 
this marvelous demand for their discon- 
tinuance ? 

Another conspicuous wonder of this 
year is the American Sabbath Union, 
ivhich was launched at Washington a 
year ago. It originated in a petition to 
the Methodist General Conference, 
which met in the previous May, asking 
it to take the initiative in forming a Na- 
tional society for the defense of the 
Sabbath, to be constituted by official 
representatives of the Evangelical 
churches, whose " Union" in this mat- 
ter should offset the "League" that had 
just been organized by the foes of the Sab- 
bath under the banner of "Personal Lib- 



erty. ' ' The Methodists acted accordingly, 
followed by the Baptist Convention, 
five Presbyterian Assemblies, the Re- 
formed (Dutch) Synod, and the Lutheran 
General Synod. The other Evangelical 
churches are expected to do likewise 
when their supreme councils meet, but 
they are all unofficially represented al- 
ready in the membership. This "or- 
ganic union," for work partly legisla- 
tive, of Presbyterians, North and South ; 
this "Pan-Presbyterian Council" which 
does not promise not to vote as well as 
talk ; this organic union of Methodists, 
North and South, white and black ; this 
successful union, to prevent the heathen- 
izing of America, of those churches that 
have not yet succeeded in uniting to 
Christianize Japan ; this co-partnership 
of intense Republicans with Southern 
leaders ; and the co-operation this union 
has established, outside of its member- 
ship, on the basis of a broad humanity 
with the leading labor organizations and 
the Catholic Church — this is surely as 
wonderful a ' ' union " as the centuries 
can show. 

The back-handed compliment, often 
bestowed upon reformers, of having zeal 
but not discretion, cannot fairly be given 
to the present leaders of what is called 
" The Sunday Rest Movement" in view 
of the wonderful union they have secured 
between labor organizations and 
churches of all creeds on a subject about 
which there have been earnest contro- 
versies even among evangelical Chris- 
tians, 

There is vast encouragement for the 
friends of the Sabbath in such an un- 
precedented union for its defense. In 
New Orleans, on Thanksgiving Day, 
at the State Sabbath Convention, 
managed by the editor of the Southwes- 
tern Presbyterian, there sat together, as 
equal delegates, sharing in voting and 
speaking and in the offices, whites and 
blacks, Protestants and Roman Cath- 
olics, capitalists and representatives of 
labor organizations. Together they 
formed the Louisiana Sunday Rest 
League. A still more satisfactory con- 
vention was that of the Ohio Sabbath 
Association, at Cleveland, in which one 



11 



afternoon was filled with the following- 
significant list of topics and speakers : 

" Christian Leadership in Sabbath 
Keeping," Prof. W. G. Ballantine, ol' 
Oberlin. 

" What Railroads are Doing and Ought 
to do for Sunday Rest," P. M. Arthur, 
Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive 
Engineers. (Mr. Arthur was detained, 
but Mr. Everett, next in rank, took his 
place.) 

"The Pennsylvania Compan^^'s Policy 
with Reference to Sunday Excursions 
and Sunday Rest," John Thomas, Gen'l 
Agt. Penn. Co. 

" Roman Catholic Cooperation in the 
Sunday Rest Movement," Manly Telle, 
Editor of the Catholic Universe. 

"The Barbers Emancipation from 
Sunday "Work by Last Night's Action of 
City Council" — addresses by two bar- 
bers, one white, one blac]v, and their at- 
torney. 

No other moral reform has ever 
brought these elements of our popula- 
tion into such cooperation. Surely Con- 
gress ought not to reject a petition rep- 
resenting such a union of good citizens 
for the defense of a National institution. 
Our petition asks Congress, for one 
thing, to enact 

A SABBATH LAW FOR THE DISTRICT OF 
COLUMBIA. 

The other day, in the streets of Wash- 
ington, a squad of laborers were re- 
quired to do Sunday work on a street 
railway. Noble men and women made 
their humane protest to the Commis- 
sioners of the District, who, on examin- 
ation, found that the District of Colum- 
bia has no Sabbath law, not even enough 
to stop servile toil on the God-given Rest 
Day. 

This puts the Capital, with France and 
California, outside the pale of Cliristian 
civiUzalion, wliich everywhere, save in 
the three places named, and in Alaska, 
Idalio and Arizona, has Sabbath laws. 
The Commissioners desire Congress to 
enact a Sabbath law for the Capital. To 
me they expressed the appropriate desire 
that it might be either the best Sabbath 
law to be found in the statutes of any 



State, or else a better one than any of 
them made by combining the best ele- 
ments of several codes. The Congress 
that rules the Capital is made up of the 
picked legislators from all the State 
legislatures. It is fitting, therefore, that 
the laws of the Capital should be a 
mosaic made up of the choicest para- 
graphs from the statutes of the States. 
Alas, the two hundred thousand people 
who have no law makers save Congress 
have to complain that they are the worst 
governed people in the land. The Cap- 
itol, spelled with an o, has turned its 
back, in more than an architectural 
sense, on the Capital, spelled with an a. 

The President promises to do what he 
can to secure from Congress the desired 
law. The most eloquent of Congress- 
men consents to prepare, introduce and 
defend it, and let all the people say 
Amen. 

The Southwest is more Western than 
Southern in its Sabbaths. The French 
Catholic planters of Louisiana, finding 
that Sunday saloons kept their em- 
ployees from work, not only through 
the sulphurously " blue Monday," but at 
length through a pale blue Tuesday also 
— two whole days being required to bring 
them back from their Sunday "recrea- 
tion," so leaving but four days a week 
for work — enacted a Sabbath law in 1886, 
from purely commercial motives. Thus 
Louisiana refuted, without religious ar- 
gument, the fallacy of the Seventh-day 
Adventists, who would have the w^eekly 
rest to be arranged by voluntary agree- 
ment between dealers and customers, 
between employers and employees. This 
plan Louisiana weighed and found want- 
ing. The new law, however, is very de- 
fective in permitting most of those who 
have useless or harmful things to sell to 
have a whole day's start in the race for 
the Saturday night wages over those 
who give "money's worth" for what 
they receive. The law needs amend- 
ment, but probably will have to fight 
even for life. I do not anticipate it will 
be killed. Riding southward from the 
Baltimore Lay Congress, a Louisiana 
delegate said to me, speaking of the 
Sunday saloon resolution, "That will 



12 



prevent the repeal of the Louisiana Sun- 
day laws." 

Texas needs a new Sabbath law to 
change the so-called "State" from a 
*' town-heap" into a real State, with 
State sovereignty, not town sovereign- 
ty or saloon sovereignty, over trade and 
toil and turmoil. Dallas, for instance, 
is given by the State the power 
to close or open saloons and 
other places of labor and business on 
Sunday by city ordinance, and so the 
city Solons have decided that a sacred 
seven hours is long enough for the Sab- 
bath, and close saloons only from nine 
to four o'clock. Even during those 
seven hours I counted twenty-nine kinds 
of business (not twenty-nine places) in 
operation. Organizations have been 
formed in Dallas, Fort "Worth and 
Gainesville (and one or two State Sab- 
bath Associations are talked of) to lift 
the Sundays of Texas out of ' ' Botany 
Bay," from which the rest of the week 
in Texas has been lifted by the better 
grade of settlers who have thronged 
into it in recent years. 

The Eocky Mountain States and Ter- 
ritories are more generally organized 
than almost any other group. Three 
years ago but two States were organ- 
ized, namely, Maryland and New Jersey. 
(There were also city organizations in 
Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.) 
When the American Sabbath Union 
began its work at the opening of this 
year there had been added to the list of 
organized States, Illinois, Iowa, Dakota 
and Kentucky. The American Sabbath 
Union has since assisted in organizing 
Ohio, Virginia, Missouri, Minnesota, 
Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Wash- 
ington, California, New Mexico, Kansas, 
Louisiana, Pennsylvania (Western), and 
Wisconsin, besides county and city asso- 
ciations. 

New Hampshire, Arkansas and Ore- 
gon have taken the preliminary steps. 

Montana will greatly need her associ- 
ation. It is one of the four States 
where Sunday saloons are not forbid- 
den; nor is common labor. Now that 
the Territory has become a State, the 
country will expect it to put away its 



wild oats and "Wild West" and 'settle 
down " to civilized ways — otherwise the 
best people will not settle in it. 

Beautiful Denver has this year made 
a noble fight against the saloons, with at 
least partial success, led on by the Daily 
News, which has distinguished itself, 
like the Daily News of Chicago, and the 
Times-Star of Cincinnati, as one of the 
few newspapers that has dared to be a 
leader in Sabbath reform. 

As to the Pacific States, in Portland, 
Oregon, the "heathen Chinee" sell all 
kinds of provisions on the Rest Day, but 
the parallel American street is more 
heathen still in opening all its saloons. 
In Sacramento five-sixths of the shop- 
keepers on the principal street do seven 
days' work for six days' profits. San 
Francisco (in this respect like New York) 
allows even its ten-cent shows to cor- 
rupt the youth on Sunday. California 
has also been the headquarters of the 
attack upon the Sabbath — the Seventh 
Day Adventists' chief publishing house 
being located there. It is certainly a 
wonder both to angels and to men, that 
in the assault upon the Sabbath of rest 
during this year, while saloonists and 
infidels and Sunday papers and Jews 
have formed the second rank, the front 
rank has been occupied by two profes- 
sedly Christian sects, the Seventh day 
Adventists and the Seventh day Baptists. 
The stenographic reports of the speeches 
of their champions at the hearing on 
the Sunday Rest Bill, show that 
' ' they fight as one that beateth the 
air," against "a union of church and 
State." It is certainly a wonder to see 
intelligent men, in this century, fighting- 
so excitedly against mediaeval castles in 
the air; to hear Christian men argue 
for the general adoption of " the no law 
plan," that has wrought such horrors 
of Sunday dissipation and Sunday toil in 
Louisiana, California and Continental 
Europe. Not only Sunday work and 
dissipation, but fidelity in fighting them 
also, is greater in the West than in the 
East. California has the dishonor of 
being at the foot of the list of States, 
indeed out of the list, in having na 
Sabbath law, but it is at the head of 



13 



the list in contributions for Sabbath 
reform, if one individual g-ift be left out 
of account. 

But the grandest fighting of the year 
has been at Cincinnati. About a jenv 
ago its Evangelical Alliance appointed 
a committee of ten ministers to see what 
could be done about the Sunday saloons. 
They took to themselves ten laymen. 
Subsequently two more persons were 
added and an executive committee of 
twentj^-two was formed to execute the 
Sunday saloon. They drew up the follow- 
ing agreement for signatures of a larger 
honorarj^ "Committee of 500" to back 
them : 

"We, the undersigned, being con- 
vinced that it is essential to the material 
and moral prosperity of the people of 
our city that our civil laws respecting 
the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday, be faithfully enforced, 
agree to become members of a commit- 
tee of Five Hundred, who shall co-oper- 
ate to secure the nomination and election 
of such municipal officers as shall pledge 
themselves to the faithful enforcement 
of these laws." 

Each of the twentj'-two carried a little 
blank book containing this agreement, 
iand gatliered endorsers until the so- 
called "Committee of 500" was really 
a committee of 2,500. Public meetings 
were held, in which the American Sab- 
bath Union had a part. When party 
caucases occurred the Committee got 
as many of its members as possible sent 
as delegates to party conventions. Un- 
able to get either party to put up a full 
list of worthy candidates, the Committee 
selected the best out of both, two good 
judges and a prosecutor, and as the 
Committee held the balance of power, 
it elected all three. Neither candidate 
for mayor was worthy and they voted 
for an independent candidate who was 
not elected. The sequel has shown that 
the City Court is more important than 
the mayoralty. The Committee sent 
out its brave agent to collect evidence. 
No one calls such a man a "spotter" 
except one whose own character is 
spotted. When it was found that even 
rich liquor dealers would be taken to the 



lock-up if found violating the laws, there 
arose a saloon rebellion, by deliberate 
vote of a whole brigade of saloonists, 
which hastened instead of delaying the 
end. At the end of July the two thou- 
sand liquor dealers of Cincinnati, in the 
person of their attorney, fell on their 
knees and begged pardon and promised 
to be good. 

The peace that Cincinnati enjoyed for 
several Sabbaths was unprecedented. 
The average Sunday arrests fell from 100 
to 6. Defects in the jury law prevent the 
victory from remaining as complete as at 
first, but when a new legislature has 
made a new jury law in the interest of 
justice the plucky Committee of Five 
Hundred will make their final victorious 
charge. Then this noble five hundred 
will need a Tennyson to tell the whole 
story of the bravest fight made in recent 
years in a bad, big city agtiinst the 
Sunday saloons. Even the imperfect 
victory has been a rallying cry in all 
the great cities of our land. 

It is worthy of note, in view of the 
carelessless of many in speaking of Ger- 
mans and Lutherans as if they were all 
saloonists and Socialists and opposers of 
the Sabbath, that the banner church in 
the Cincinnati fight against the saloons 
was tiie Lutheran Church of which Rev. 
E. K. Bell is pastor, whose every male 
member, of age, was down in black and 
white in tlie roll of the ' ' Committee of 
500." In this connection it is appro- 
priate to note the following resolution, 
passed by the General Synod of the 
Evangelical Lutheran Church on June 
21st, 1889: "Resolved, That we hereby 
indorse the petitions to the two houses 
of Congress asking for a law against 
needless Sunday work in the Govern- 
ment's mail and military service, and in 
interstate commerce, and in the District 
of Columbia, and the Territories, and we 
authorize tlie presiding officers to sign 
the two petitions in our behalf." 

I hardly need to say that in all the 
battles for the Sabbath our white plume 
of Navarre is the white ribbon of the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 
whose Sabbath observance department, 
in charge of Mrs. J. C. Bateham, was 



14 



the first brigade to enlist in this new cru- 
sade for the Sabbath and is still the best. 

It is hardly a good omen of the speedy- 
coming of Bellamy's ideal republic of 
unselfishness, that while the transconti- 
nental trip has been cut down, in recent 
years, from seven days to six, and this 
year from six to five, the thought has 
not entered the brains or hearts of either 
railroad manager or travelers, that this 
gained day should be given to railroad 
employees for their Sabbath rest. All 
gains must go to selfishness, none to hu- 
manity. 

None need the Eest Day more than 
those on long journeys, and therefore 
many people, if not most, would prefer 
a train that stopped for the Sabbath at 
Cincinnati or Chicago or St. Louis or 
Omaha or Denver — those who wished 
remaining in the Pullman, with no 
change of baggage — immigrants staying 
in their cars with no cost except a trifle 
extra for their lunch basket — each find- 
ing rest either in churches or elsewhere, 
and so reaching San Francisco in good 
condition, saving a doctor's bill or three 
days of good-for-nothingness at the end 
of the journey by resting one day in the 
middle. 

Who are the passengers on our trains? 
Mostly " runners." The name is very 
appropriate. Even their meals have to 
be "run" into their stomachs b^^ ex- 
press. Gladstone's advice to chew each 
mouthful of food thirty-two times, they 
must eschew. Having been myself a 
" runner" for Sabbath reform for many 
months, I know by observation and ex- 
perience that it is very unhealthy. Not 
only food but sleep must be *' at all 
hours." Every runner's grip carries an 
apothecary shop. Commercial travel- 
ers have a better reputation than tney 
formerly had, but they are not yet can- 
onized. Morally as well as physically 
they need one day when they can 
neither trade nor travel. 

With all that is hopeful, there is much 
to alarm us. Every friend of the Sab- 
bath should become its sentinel and go 
about its walls to find where they are 



being undermined, and how they can be 
best defended. I seldom find even a 
ministerial watchman who is not sur- 
prised when I report the result of my 
Sunday morning reconnaissance of the 
city in which he has lived for years. 
You have perhaps heard the story of 
how Macready, the actor, used to strug- 
gle with a ladder before going on the 
stage on some occasions, and of how he 
once nearly shook the life out of a scene- 
shifter's son who was delightfully sur- 
veying the performance from the wings. 
In ''Fifty Years of Artistic Life," the 
writer adds something more to our 
knowledge of Macready's expedients for 
exciting himself to the requisite pitch. 
He declares that the great actor em- 
ployed two unfortunate supers, whose 
business it was to make faces at him,, 
tread on his toes, kick him, and other- 
wise provoke him until he was in a state 
of exasperation bordering on the de- 
moniac. *' More," he would growl, as he 
stood at the wing, preparing to make 
a terrific entry; "more, you beasts!" 
until an exceptionally severe kick hap- 
pening to coincide with the moment for 
his sudden appearance, he would knock 
down each of his hired tormentors, and 
rush upon the stage like a maniac. 

If a minister wishes to be aroused to 
preach with due earnestness against 
Sunday work, let him take an hour's 
walk before church through the busi- 
ness part of his city and note how many 
young men and boys are kept from Sab- 
bath rest by shiftless buyers and greedy 
employers. 

" How much do you weigh?" said a 
passerby to a boy. " Generally eighty 
pounds, but when I'm mad I weigh a 
ton." The easy indifference of many 
editors and preachers to the growing 
curse of Sunday toil and traffic and 
turmoil would give place to wholesome 
earnestness if they would but consider 
the jaded bodies, the saddened homes, 
the ruined souls of the two millions of 
Sunday slaves in our land who wait for 
deliverance. 



15 



For Congressman of , Washington, D. C» 

A PETITION TO CONORESS FOR A I^AMT AOAIXST U\XEC- 
ESSARY SUNDAY \YORK IX THE CAPITAL OF OCR 
COIJXTRY. 

The Commissioners of the District of Columbia having found no law in the 
District by which even servile Sunday labor could be stopped, requested Congress 
to provide such a law, and the President approved their request. The American 
Sabbath Union and the Commissioners joined in a request to Col. W. C. P. Breck- 
inridge, of Kentucky, that he would prepare and introduce the bill, which is as 
follows : " 51st Congress, 1st Session, H. R. 3854. In the House of Representatives, 
January 6, 1890. Read twice, referred to the Committee on the District of Colum- 
bia, and ordered to be printed. Mr. Breckineidge, of Kentucky, introduced the 
following bill : 

A BIEE to prevent persons from being forced to labor on Sunday. Be it en- 
acted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America 
in Congress assembled, That it shall be unlawful for any person or corporation, or 
employee of any person or corporation in the District of Columbia, to perform any 
secular labor or business, or to cause the same to be performed by any person in 
their employment on Sunday, except works of necessity or mercy ; nor shall it be 
lawful for any person or corporation to receive pay for labor or services performed 
or rendered in violation of this act. 

Any person or corporation, or employee of any person or corporation in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, who shall violate the provisions of this act, shall, upon convic- 
tion thereof, be punished b}'' a fine of not more than one hundred dollars for every 
such offense : Provided, however. That the provisions of this act shall not be con- 
strued to apply to any person or persons who conscientiously believe in and observe 
any other day of the week than Sunday as a day of rest." 

To the United States Senate and House of Representatives: The 

undersigned adult residents and organizations of the town or city of __ 

county of - State of , hereby earnestly petition your honor- 
able body for the passage of House Bill 3854, entitled "A bill to prevent persons from 
being forced to labor on Sunday," and intended to give the same protection against 
Sunday toil and traffic and turmoil to the residents of the District of Columbia as is 
enjoyed by the constituents of nearly all the members of Congress through State 
laws. 

[To be endorsed by individual signatures and by organizations, in the latter case 
by vote, in which case the name of the organization and the number of members, 
and the vote and date should be recorded, with the attestmg signature of the presid- 
ing officer, or clerk, or both. Add more paper for SIOXATURES,] 



Ex-Justice Strong, U. S. Supreme 
Court {Letter, Nov. ^4, 1888) : '' I feel 
much interest in maintaining* the Sab- 
hath, ahke for its relig-ious uses and for 
its benefits to the community generally. 
I regard the maintenance of Sunday 
laws as of extreme importance, essential 
indeed to true civil liberty." 

Hon. Wm. C. P. Breckindridge, M. 
C, Address at New York, Jan. 28, 1888: 
** The State owes it to itself and to its 
present citizens, and to the generations 
that are to come to protect this Day on 
precisely the same grounds that they 
protect the marital relations." 

''The Sabbath for Man,'' Chapter III. : 
*' Sabbath laws are consistent with 
liberty in that they are laws for the 
prevention of cruelty to animals, in that 
they are laws of health, in that they are 
laws for increasing the National wealth, 
in that they are laws for harmonizing 
the relations of capital and labor, in that 
they are laws for the protection of the 
home, in that they are laws for the pre- 
vention of crime, in that they are laws 
for the protection of one of the chief 
historic institutions of the Nation, in 
that they are, in short, laws of National 
self-preservation. ' ' 

Christian Statesman, Philadelphia : 
^*No persecution has resulted from the 
Sabbath laws on the statute-books of the 
American people for the last two hun- 
dred years. On the other hand, the 
secular theories of government which 
these Adventists have so mistakenly 
espoused, have never given liberty to a 
single square foot of the earth's surface." 

Rev. W. W. Atterbury, D. D., Sec. 
N. Y. Sabbath Committee : "Marriage 
was formerly recognized by law as a 
religious institution. It is now protected 
by law, just like our weekly rest-day, as 
a natural right. The basis of our Sun- 
day laws is thus stated by the Court of 
Appeals of New York : The founders of 
our Government prohibited a Church 



establishment, and left every man free 
to worship God according to the dictates 
of his own conscience or not to worship, 
as he pleases. But they do not suppose 
they have abolished the Sabbath as a day 
of rest for all, and for Christian worship 
for those who were disposed to engage 
in it, or deprive themselves of the power 
to protect religious worshipers from un- 
seemly interruptions. It is a law of our 
nature that one day in seven must be 
observed as a time of relaxation ; and 
experience proves a day of weekly rest 
to be of admirable service to a State, 
considered merely as a civil institution. 
The stability of government, the welfare 
of the subject, and the interest of society 
have made it necessary that the day of 
rest observed by the people of a nation 
should be uniform, and that its obser- 
vance should be to some extent com- 
pulsory, not by way of enforcing the 
conscience of those upon whom the law 
operates, but by way of protection to 
those who desire and are entitled to the 
day. 33 Barbour, 549-69, New York, 557." 

Christian at Work, Neio York, Jan. 
SI, 1889: "We believe the- feehng for 
conserving, for protecting our American 
Sunday is the strongly dominant feeling 
throughout the country. So soon as the 
issue is joined, and the attempt is made 
to disestablish our one Rest Day, so soon 
will our American spirit manifest itself 
to guard what is one of the corner- 
stones of our national fabric. The Amer- 
ican Sunday is here, it has been here over 
two centuries, and it is here to stay." 

Gov. James A. Beaver, in Address to 
Y. M. C. A, Convention, Philadelphia : 
" It lies largely with the Christian young 
men of the United States to American- 
ize the vast multitudes of foreign young 
men constantly coming to our shores. 
Bring them first to observe the Sab- 
bath. These young men often have crude 
ideas as to liberty. Run up the Stars 
and Stripes in place of the red flag." 



16 



THE CIVIL SABBATH THE FRIEND, NOT THE FOE, OF LIBERTY. 



AN ADDRESS AT LOS ANGELES, CAL., IN 
hazard's pavilion, by rev. WILBUR 
F. CRAFTS, SEPT. 1, 1889. 

Fellow -workers icifh the Truth, Felloiv- 
seekers for the Truth : 
Coining westward, I instructed myself 
as to the comparative size of Eastern 
and Western States by cutting up a rail- 
road map. I found that to cover Cali- 
fornia required ten Atlantic States — all 
o.f New England, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
vania, Delaware and Maryland. As the 
people of California, like other Western 
people, are so manifestly lacking in local 
pride, I suggest that this deficiency be 
corrected in the next generation by set- 
ting the children at this map exercise, 
feeding the little States of the Atlantic 
shore to this sea monster of the Pacific. 
California, no doubt, will some day 
«qual those ten Eastern States in popula- 
tion and wealth, as well as in territory. 
Your marvelous climate alone would 
bring the population. On one of the re- 
cent August days, a lady in Oakland said 
to me that she had just made a trip to 
San Rafael to get warm. You can quickly 
find refuge from occasional heat at the 
seaside, or, by waiting a few hours, re- 
ceive the cool sea air at eventide where- 
ever you are in the State. You need, 
even in August and in your warmest 
valleys, an invention with clock attach- 
ment to lay an extra blanket on each 
sleeper at every stroke of the hour from 
bedtime till midnight. 
• People of California, I greet you as 
citizens of one of the three mighties, in 
extent of territory, of the United States 
— which three mighties are Texas, Cali- 
fornia and Montana. We used to sing, 
*' Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us 
all a farm." California alone is rich 
-enough to give a farm of twelve acres to 
every family of five in the land. If each 
man, woman and child was set in the 
middle of his or her two acres and the 
signal was given to sink down into the 
grass or brush, our whole population 
would suddenly disappear. 



Surely this State will have no lack of 
wealth. But it will not rise by booms. 
It is about as safe to rise by bombs. It 
is dangerous to have either of these in 
your hands when they "gooff." Raising 
corner lots is not your best crop. Your 
soil is rich, not only in precious metals, 
but in the gold of your peaches, your 
oranges, your wheat ; in the silver of 
your buckwheat and your olive trees ; 
in the greenbacks of your corn and vines. 
An Easterner is in danger of mistaking 
your strawberries for red apples, your 
peaches for cantaloupes, and your fields 
of pumpkins for a meteoric shower of 
fallen planets. (Laughter and applause.) 

In the Metropolitan Museum at New 
York, California is symbolized by a bare 
and lonely maiden. If I were a sculptor 
I would represent her more suitably in 
variegated marble — in a fountain group, 
to picture your miracles of irrigation — 
as a majestic mother, of heroic figure, 
richly clothed, a diadem of your native 
gold upon her head, her robe of the royal 
purple of your grapes ; surrounded by a 
great household of sons and daughters. 

But extensive territor}^, numerous 
population, and immense wealth do not 
make a State great, only big, like Rus- 
sia. Character is essential to greatness 
in States as well as individuals. Cali- 
fornia will never be one of the three 
greatest States, in the true sense of the 
word, until she is one of the three best. 
(Applause.) She must learn to yield not 
only gold, and grapes, and grain, but 
also, with equal abundance, honesty, 
morality, and charity ; and these can no 
more 'be produced without the Sabbath 
than your fruits without water. _ 

California is the only one of our States 
without a civil Sabbath. Not New Jer- 
sey, but California is the "foreign land." 
The only other spot in the civilized 
world without a Sunday law, save D. 
C. and three Territories, is France. If 
you would not be a "Frenchy" but an 
American commonwealth, and would 
draw for permanent residents the best 



18 



American families, you m.ust cast out the 
French Sunday and foster 

THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

The golden mien between despotism 
and anarchy is liberty. The mightiest 
foe of these extremes, the best friend of 
this golden mien, is the British- American 
Sabbath, itself a golden mien between 
the Puritan Sabbath and the Continental 
Sunday. Such a Sabbath is not merely 
consistent with liberty but essential to. 
it. True Americans of all sections should 
sentinel this American Sabbath. By 
''true Americans"! mean what Dr. 
Josiah Strong calls " Americans in 
spirit.'" There are real German- Amer- 
ican, real Irish- Americans. In this sense 
the Irish imigrant, who said he had con- 
cluded to take America for his native 
land, could have done so. On the other 
hand, some who were born Americans 
have apostatized by adopting the foreign 
saloon and its Siamese twin, the foreign 
holiday Sunday. Apart from all re- 
ligious considerations, the true patriot 
should reject the Continental Sunday as 
the " holiday of despotism." So Hallam, 
the great philosopher of history, calls it, 
bidding us note that the despots of 
Europe have studiously cultivated a love 
of Sunday pastimes to keep the people 
quiet under political distresses ; that is, 
the holiday Sunday, which is offered to 
us by Continentals as the very insignia 
of "personal liberty," is rather its sub- 
stitute, the tinsel bauble which shrewd 
monarchs have given to the adult in- 
fants of the Continent in place of the 
ballot of freemen. There is no "Foun- 
tain of Youth," but the Continental Sun- 
day is a fountain of perpetual babyhood. 
There is no instance of a stable, loQg 
continued popular government where 
the people have kept themselves in in- 
fancy by devoting their God-given Rest 
Day to Sunday dissipation and its twin, 
Sunday toil. Who would be surprised 
to hear to-morrow that France, of the 
holiday Sunday, had thrown away her 
republicanism, as a spoiled child throws 
away a toy? The revived American 
spirit should refuse, as the worst of im- 
migrants, the Continental Sunday, and 
hold to the American Sabbath as the 



very heart of Americanism. The only 
ism a man .needs to make him defend the 
American Sabbath is patriotism. Some 
of those who make the most frantic pro- 
test against any change in the American 
Constitution are foremost in efforts to 
overthrow this chief American institu- 
tion. American institutions are the 
roots of the American Constitution, and 
the American Sabbath is the very tap- 
root of them all, supplying the people 
with the physical, mental and moral 
vitality necessary to self-government. 
(Applause.) 

No paper that seeks to uproot this 
American Sabbath has a right to put the 
word " American " in its name. 

A few days ago there appeared in your 
streets this notice : " Mass Meeting at 
Hazard's Pavilion, Tuesday Evening, 
August 27. ' The principles of a Sunday 
Rest Law' will be discussed at eight 
o'clock. Everybody whether now op- 
posed or in favor of such a law, should 
be there." Many of you, who have heard 
all you care to hear from Seventh-day 
Adventists, were deceived into attending 
that meeting, supposing it was our long-^ 
expected meeting in behalf of such a 
law. Those who come to a properly an- 
nounced lecture of an opponent should 
hear him through, but many of you made 
a suitable protest against being tricked, 
by going out as soon as you discovered 
that your attendance had been obtained 
under false pretenses. That trick* is a 
fair sample of 

THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST 

plan of campaign. They beguile people 
to attend or buy a series of " Bible read- 
ings for the Home Circle," and only 
gradually reveal their purpose, which 
is not so much the conversion of sinners 
as the perversion of saints. They go 
from door to door offering for sale " a. 
book on the Sabbath" or -on history, 
" The Marvel of Nations," giving no 
clew that in both cases it is in defense 
of the Saturday Sabbath. They circu- 
late a petition which gives no hint that 
it is in the interest of the Saturday Sab- 
bath but is urged as a preventive of a 
union of church and State and other re- 

* See pages 119-126. 



19 



ligious legislation, and so secures the 
signatures even of Methodists and Pres- 
byterians, but is presented at Washing- 
ton as chiefly against the civil Sabbath 
to which many of its signers are earnest- 
ly devoted. While other denominations 
call their publishing houses by such 
names as *' Methodist Book Concern," 
" Presb;>i;erian Board of Publication," 
the Seventh-day Adventist conceal their 
flag under two aliases, namely, "Pacific 
Press Publication Company" and " In- 
ternational Tract Society." Instead of 
giving their chief paper its real name 
and banner, namely The Advent Senti- 
nel for the defense of Adventism and 
the Saturday Sabbath, they disguise it 
under the name of " The American Sen- 
tinel, devoted to the defense of Ameri- 
can institutions," You will not be sur- 
prised to know that this paper, which 
starts out with a false flag in its very 
name, judged by an issue taken at ran- 
dom, averages seven mistakes per foot 
square. (Applause.) 

The so-called American Sentinel is as 
surely un-American as the German Sen- 
tinel of the liquor traffic, with which it 
§tood in opposition to our American 
Civil Sabbath at the Senate Committee's 
hearing in Washington, and with which 
it opposes even Sunday closing of sa- 
loons, except in prohibition towns that 
close on all days. In the name of a 
Christian church, this Sentinel of the 
Saturday Sabbath echoes the very argu- 
ments of Ingersoll's " Secular Union," 
whose representative fought on the 
same side at that same hearing. 

SABBATH LAWS ARE XOT RELIGIOUS LEGIS- 
LATION. 

The right arm, the most important 
part, of the Sabbath Reform is the pro- 
motion of the religious Sabbath ; its left 
arm, the preservation of the civil Sab- 
bath. These two things — the Christian 
Sabbath on the one hand, and the Amer- 
ican Sabbath on the other — are as dis- 
tinct as my two arms, that resemble and 
cooperate, and yet are by no means the 
same. This distinction '.s itself an an- 
swer to most of the objections to Sabbath 
laws, which rest chiefly on the false as- 



sumption that they are enforcements of 
a duty to God, punishments of a sin 
against God. We make no dissent 
from the inference that Christ's words, 
"Render to Csesar the things that are 
Cassar's, and to God the things that are 
God's," forbid Christians to enforce by 
civil law anything that is only a duty 
to God, or to punish by civil law anything 
that is only a sin against God. It is ad- 
mitted, however, by our opponents that 
it is the province of civil law to enforce 
man's duties to man, and especially to 
punish crimes against man. It is exactly 
on this ground that Sabbath laws forbid 
Sunday work and Sunday dissipation, 
namely, as crimes against man. A no- 
torious outlaw made the pious statement, 
" I never rob a poor man." Probably he 
does not kill a dead man. To rob a poor 
man of his purse or coat is only petty 
larceny. But it is grand larceny to steal 
the poor man's weekly Rest day, his 
" Home day," his Independence day 
Ceaseless toil is slow murder. 

Sunday laws are not " religious legis- 
lation " because they come from the Bi- 
ble any more than the laws against adul- 
tery, which are as distinctly a part of 
Biblical morality, in distinction from 
heathen morality, as Sabbath laws. 
Both the Bible and the codes of the. most 
advanced governments* forbid murder, 
theft, adultery, false witness, and work 
on the Sabbath. Religion renders to 
God the things that are God's by forbid- 
ding these things chiefly as sins against 
God. Government renders to Ccesarthe 
things that are Cesar's by forbidding 
them as crimes against man. As a 
Seventh-day Adventist " Sentinel tract " 
against "Religious Legislation," says: 
" Legislation against crime is not reli- 
gious legislation. It is legislation on 
moraility purely on a civil basis.'" 

Put, then, into the religious Sabbath 
as its water-mark the word " sin," relat- 
ing to. wrongs done to God, and into the 
civil Sabbath as its water-mark the word 
" crime," referring to wrongs done to 
man. 

There are many who hold the theory 
— which I neither affirm here nor deny — 
that the State is accountable to God, as 



20 



well as the individual and the church, 
and should forbid itself to sin, and may 
therefore forbid Sabbath-breaking on 
higher grounds than the wrong it brings 
to man, but I wish to show that there 
are grounds enough that are purely hu- 
man and humane to justify him who 
holds the most secular theory of govern- 
ment in defending the civil Sabbath. 
Even on the Let-alone view of govern- 
ment as only a police force to protect 
men against infringements on their 
rights, the civil Sabbath can be amply 
vindicated. 

In other countries, where church and 
state are mixed, and in our own country 
in other days, the limitations of Sabbath 
laws have not always been clearly per- 
ceived. The noble Puritans were not 
able to see the error of compulsory 
church going, which they did not orig- 
inate, but copied from their age. Even 
the fourth commandment does not en- 
force that, and the Jews, who punished 
working on the Sabbath so severely, 
never punished anybody for not worship- 
ing. As well suppose the telephone 
wires can be changed back to ore as to 
suppose that error of the otherwise ad- 
mirable Sabbath of our fathers can return. 
Eecent Sabbath legi«lation has aimed 
only to make a dies non, a no day, not a 
lioly day, an empty day, ojjportunity for 
viTorship for him who wishes to worship, 
for rest in other ways to others. Privi- 
lege is the very definition of the civil 
Sabbath. "The Sabbath was made for 
man," said Christ. They echo this say- 
ing who defend the Sabbath, not by ap- 
pealing only or chiefly to God's will, but 
— to use a constitutional term — to " the 
general welfare." " Whose is the image 
and superscription ? " cry the opponents 
of Sabbath laws ; and they answer, 
"The Lord's," for it is called "The 
Lord's Day." But the Lord of the Sab- 
l3ath says it was " made for man," and 
so stamps it "Man's Day" also.- It is 
only man's part in the Day that Ameri- 
can Sabbath laws defend. 

A homely illustration or two will 
make this point clear. A shrewd Iowa 
farmer put up in his melon patch this 
sign : "Boys, do not touch these mel- 



ons, for they are green and God sees 
you." The church exhorts men against 
Sunday work and Sunday dissipation 
because God sees and will punish ; but 
the State forbids these, things because 
they are unhealthy to the body politic 
physically, mentally, morally and polit- 
ically. A college president, having dis- 
covered two sophomores hazing, called 
them into his presence while his wrath 
was warm, and said : " Gentlemen, such 
conduct is displeasing to God, and 
whafs more, I won't stand it.''^ The 
church says of Sabbath desecration : 
Such conduct is displeasing to God ; 
but the State says of Sunday work : 
What is more to us, charged to protect 
not divine but human rights, we won't 
stand it — the perpetual treadmill of 
toil, labor without leisure. (Applause.) 
The only clause of mine that even the 
masters of sophistry can pervert into a 
seeming support of the idea that Sun- 
day laws are " religious legislation " is 
the following: "A weekly day of rest 
has never been permanently secured in 
any land except on the basis of relig- 
ious obligation." That means that back 
of the law there must be an approval of 
it in the public conscience, as back of 
marriage laws ; but the Sabbath laws, 
like the marriage laws, can be justified 
on hygienic, social and moral grounds 
to those who reject the religious ones. 
The most active opponent of Sabbath 
laws says incessantly, as if it were a 
self-evident and incontrovertible axiom: 
" The State can never properly legislate 
in relation to anything in the first four 
commandments of the Decalogue." I do 
not raise here any question as to the 
authority of the fourth commandment, 
but only meet this opponent for a mo- 
ment on his own ground. The chief 
plank in the Seventh Day Adventist 
platform rests on the assumption that 
the first of the two Stone Tables given 
by God to Moses included the first four 
commandments. This foundation is a 
sand heap. No one knows where the 
first table ends, but the full pause near- 
est to the middle of the commandments 
is after the words, " Eemember the 
Sabbath day to keep it holy." This is 



21 



also the natural point of division on the 
basis of the structure of thought. If 
the plan of God, as is natural to sup- 
pose, was to put the commands that re- 
late chiefly to man's duties to God on 
the first table, the point where it must 
have ended is with that sentence about 
keeping- holy the religious Sabbath. 
The remainder of the Fourth Command- 
ment was given, as Moses says to each 
employer, " That thy man-servant and 
thy maid-servant may rest as well as 
thou." That part of the fourth com- 
mandment is as much a civil affair as 
the succeeding laws about home, and 
property, and life, and purity, and repu- 
tation, and so belongs among the com- 
mandments that relate to man's duties 
to man. The fourth commandment is 
the transition commandment that con- 
nects what are chiefly duties to God 
with what are chiefly duties to man. 

WHAT FRIENDS OF THE CIVIL SABBATH 
CLAIM, ITS FOES ADMIT. 

Professor A. T. Jones, the leader of 
the Seventh Day Adventists, whose 
main argument I have been considering, 
in his address at the Sunday Rest Hear- 
ing in Washington, after denying the 
right of government to legislate about 
anything in the first four command- 
ments, admitted enough, in response to 
a question about Mormons, to justify the 
civil Sabbath. He said (italics ours) : 
*' If in the exercise of his religious con- 
victions, under the first four command- 
ments, he invades the rights of his 
neighbor, then the civil government 
says that is unlawful. Why ? Because 
it is irreligious, or because it is immor- 
al ? Not at all ; but because it is unciv- 
il, and for that reason only." 

It is because men are so *' uncivil," 
so unneighborly, that they " invade the 
rights" of their employees and their 
competitors to a weekly Rest day, and 
their rights of conscience, that the civil 
government says, " That is unlawful." 

In that same hearing, another Seventh- 
day Adventist leader, Stephen M. Has- 
kell, made the following admission : 

"We do not say that the United 
States Government has no right to leg- 
islate in reference to certain days on 
which men may work, but we say it 



enforcing as a religious ordinance or 
religious observance certain days. There 
are certain days, as fast days and thanks- 
giving days, in regard to the observance 
of which we make no question ; but en- 
forcing a religious observance on indi- 
viduals is the point to which we object." 

So do we all. 

The leader of the Seventh-day Bap- 
tists, Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D., also 
" gave his case away " by the following 
admission ; 

"Mr. Chairman, I rise for a word of 
personal explanation in regard to the 
* giving away' which my friend Dr. 
Johnson seemed to discover. The com- 
mittee will remember that I distinctly 
said that if the running of a railroad 
train on Sunday were determined or 
shown to be detrimental to the interests 
of the Commonwealth I would not ask 
for that privilege. I did not agree that 
the running of a railroad train should 
be determined to be detrimental to the 
Commonwealth upon the ground that 
Sunday is a sacred day, for I do not be- 
lieve that ; but for me to ask the privi- 
lege of doing any business that was 
proven upon scientific grounds and 
grounds well understood to be detri- 
mental to the general interest of the 
Commonwealth would be a sign of big- 
otry rather than of intelligence. I 
therefore do not say I would consent to 
this prohibition upon the ground that 
Sunday is a sacred day, but on the 
ground that it would be inimical to the 
best interests of the Commonwealth." 

That is precisely the ground on which 
Sunday trains are generally opposed and 
forbidden. 

The infidel Wolff, who represented 
Ingersoll's "Secular Union" at that 
hearing, said : "It would be legitimate 
for you to set apart a day of rest ; you 
do set apart holidays where the people 
take recreation, are exempted from 
work and the performance of public du- 
ties, and that is just about as far as you 
liave any right to go " 

But that is going far enough to justify 
a civil Sabbath. 

The attorney of the liquor dealers, 
who was present at the hear ng, ex- 



pressed approval of the speeches from 
which I have quoted, and made no dis- 
sent from these admissions. 

The only other element of organized 
opposition to Sunday laws — one far less 
violent than any of those previously 
mentioned — the Jews — was not represen- 
ted at the hearing, but had its say during 
that same week, in that same city, in an 
address against "the Puritanic Sab- 
bath," by Eabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D. 
D., who made an admission as like the 
others as the peas in a pod, in the fol- 
lowing paragraph : 

"Beyond the recognition, on hygienic 
grounds, that the human body needs one 
day out of every seven for rest and rec- 
reation, and beyond legalizing that day 
as Sabbath which is preferred by the 
greatest numbers of the people, and 
beyond protecting that day as much as 
is consistent with its authority, the State 
has no other duties in connection with 
the Sabbath." 

That is pedestal enough to hold smj 
Sabbath law in the United States. 

These six admissions show clearly that 
the opponents of the Sabbath are but- 
ting at their own shadows, fighting as 
one that beateth the air against the en- 
forcement of a religious observance of the 
Sabbath, which is nowhere attempted. 

To a pastor, calling on a family of his 
parish, the father said: "I don't see 
why my boys ain't better boys. I make 
^em get down and pray every night, and 
if they won't get down, I knock 'em 
down, and yet they ain't good." It is 
seriously argued by our opponents that 
we propose a similar way of making 
them and others " good " by cumpulsory 
church-gomg. This will surely take the 
prize as the biggest of all bugbears. 

Only slightly smaller is another of the 
same parentage — the alarm about Sab- 
bath laws colliding with the Constitution. 

SABBATH LAWS ARE CONSTITUTIONAL. 

The Supreme Courts of the twenty- 
five States in which the matter has been 
tested have so declared.* This is one of 
the rare instances in which the final 
decisions in all the highest courts are all 

*Also U. S. Supreme Court, see p. 1 ; also 99 U. 
S. 578. 11113.8.597. 23 How. 209. 24 How. 247. 2 
Dall. 213.— 16:682.— 125 U. S. 555. The 'Re- 
vised Statutes of the United States," in 1878, con- 
tained four operative Sunday laws : One against 



on one side. The lawyer's chief labor, 
in most cases, is to prove that the ten 
decisions on his client's side weigh more 
than the dozen decisions on the other 
side. When twenty-five Supreme Courts 
are on one side, on a purely legal 
matter, namely, the harmony of one 
legal document, called a Sabbath Law, 
with another, called the Constitution, 
he who has only his own unexpert 
opinion on the other side certainly has 
a very weak case. 

It is well to recall the grounds upon 
which these decisions have been based. 
The objectors always quote the first 
amendment of the United States Con- 
stitution, that prohibits Congress to set 
up " an establishment of religion." The 
word "establishment"' is a historic 
word, of no doubtful interpretation. 
When it was written into the Constitu- 
tion, there was in the Old World, as 
there is to-day, the custom of selecting a 
single religion or a single sect . and 
supporting it by the State, which also 
appoints its officers. A Sabbath law, in 
order to come under this prohibition, 
would need to require the building of 
churches by taxation, the State support 
of ministers of religion, and their politi- 
cal appointment, which no advocate of 
Sabbath legislation proposes or desires. 

I have shown that the reference to 
"an establishment of religion" in the 
first amendment to the Constitution has 
no application whatever to the American 
Sabbath ; but the latter part of this 
amendment which requires that Con- 
gress shal make no laws prohibiting the 
free exercise of religion, does have a 
bearing upon the case in hand. When 
Congress ordered Sunday work in the 
mail service, it broke this Constitutional 



distilling on Sunday, with $1000 penalty ; two inter- 
mitting studies on Sunday in the Military and Na- 
val Academies ; and a fourth declared Sunday a 
dies non, -d dayiiOt to be counted in bankruptcy 
proceedings. Tlie same year the 45th Congress (2d 
Session Ch. •313), passed a Sunday law for the Dis- 
trict of Columbia to protect— not employees, but 
game birds, forbidding any one to shoot such on 
Sunday. Here are five precedents for Congressional 
Sunday legislation. The question is therefore not 
whether Congress shall fieg-w such legislation, but 
whether it shall logically and equitably complete 
what it has begun. Its Sunday legislation is like 
the unfinished Washington monument, of a few 
vearsago, in its ugly and reproachful incomplete- 
iies-. Let Congress complete its undertaking by 
adding the proposed Sunday Jaw for the Capital, 
and then put on 1he shining cap stone by givingthe 
Civil Kbst Day to aU who are under its jurisdiction. 



23 



provision, for it made it impossible, by 
this irreligious test, for millions devoted 
to the Church, and unwilling to give up 
its services, and conscientious about 
doing needless Sunday work, to hold 
positions in this largest department of 
public service. That Act of Congress 
ivas not a law but a crime. The most 
•conscientious men, who are best adapted 
to handle the wealth of the people in 
the mail, are thus distinctly excluded 
from the " post-offices of the country — a 
very serious interference with the " free 
exercise of religion." The petition 
against Sunday mails is, therefore, not 
-a request that Congress will do some- 
thing for religion, but that it will cease 
to do something against religion. The 
present status is not neutrality, but 
hostility". We do not believe in state 
and church, but neither do we believe 
in state against church. Our petition 
asks Congress to desist from breaking 
.the Constitution. (Applause. )_ 

A Boston paper printed the statement, 
-'Governor Long is not in favor of the 
jDrohibitory amendment." An errata 
mext day said, "For ' not' read 'out.' '* 
The Adventists have made the opposite 
mistake. " The friends of the Sabbath 
are out for a union of Church and State " 
should have "not " in place of " out." 

But the best answer to the objection 
that the American civil Sabbath is un- 
constitutional, is the United States Con- 
;stitution itself, which already contains a 
Sunday law\ The only objection to it is, 
that it is an un-American monopoly, 
"special legislation " for the benefit of 
one man. In the Article I, section 7, 
it is provided that the President shall 
have ten days (Sundays excepted) in 
which to consider a bill sent to him 
by Congress, before it can become a law 
without his signature.* Here is a distinct 
provision for the protection of the 
President in his right to the Day of Rest 
and in liis rights of conscience. That 
parenthesis " (Sundays excepted)" is an 
acorn which millions of petitioners 
desire should be allowed to grow into 
the wide-spreading oak of a Congres- 
sional ** Sunday rest law,"" under whose 

*0f 30 States that give the Governor veo power, 
28 except Sundays as above. 



shadow, with the President, the lowliest 
servants of the Government in the mail 
and military service, and all others who 
are under the jurisdiction of Congress, 
may also enjoy the Day of Rest. (Ap- 
plause.) 

The theory that the present " Sunday 
Rest Movement" is only a scheme to 
unite church and state encounters the 
difficulty that the Brotherhood of Loco- 
motive Engineers and the Knights of 
Labor, in their international conventions 
of 1888, approved it ; but this difficulty 
is summarily disposed of by our oppon- 
ents with the hysterical statement that 
these bodies only endorsed our petition 
because I "pleaded with them." The 
fact is that I began my first address to a 
labor organization, the Central Labor 
Union of New York City, by reading the 
action against Sunday work which the 
Buffalo Labor Union had taken on its 
own motion ; and so my keynote at the 
Brotherhood Convention w^as the bitter 
cry of four hundred and fifty engineers 
of the Vanderbilt roads for a Sabbath of 
rest, written by themselves years before 
I undertook Sabbath reform ; in fact, 
that flaming appeal was the torch at 
which I lighted the red lantern I have 
since been swinging in front of Sunday 
trains. (Applause.) 

SABBATH LAWS ARE CONSISTENT WITH 
LIBERTY. 

Foreigners of the baser sort think not. 
Let us not forget there are also foreign- 
ers of the better sort who ought not to 
be called foreigners at all. Canadians, 
Quebec French excepted, are the truest 
Americans — granite blocks of ancestry. 
When the Pan-Americans were in Bos- 
ton, their un-American escort, instead 
of showmg them the very best thing 
our country has to show to those who 
are under the curse of the Continental 
Sunday, namely, an American Sabbath, 
got up a public Sunday dinner, and 
Boston's officers dishonored themselves 
by attending, hut a like invitation on 
the next Sabbath to the Mayor of To- 
ronto, was promptly declined. (Ap- 
plause.) Other British immigrants gen- 
erally re-enforce, not weaken, our pristine 
stock. Hollanders sign our petitions by 
the thousand, and Scandinavians man 



34 



our law and order leagues. The General 
Synod of Lutherans, journeying on a 
Saturday night of a recent year by rail, 
expecting to reach a certain place before 
midnight to spend the "Lord's Day," 
on being delayed, required their car to 
be side-tracked at 12 o'clock in the 
vs^ilderness rather than wrong God and 
humanity even by an hour or two of 
Sunday traveling. 

But there is another kind of foreigners. 

When Cambyses invaded Egypt, know- 
ing that they worshipped cats, he had 
each soldier in the front rank of his 
army take in his left hand, in place of a 
shield, a sacred cat. The Egyptians 
dared not strike lest they should kill a 
god, and so the invaders conquered 
them without a blow. The first part of 
that history is repeating itself in our 
land. (God forbid, patriots forbid, that 
the last part of it should be repeated.) 
We are being invaded by an army of 
Continentals who desire to break down 
our institutions in the interest of their 
lusts, and who march in upon us with our 
sacred word "liberty " as their shield, 
"They bawl for freedom in their senseless moods, 
And still revolt when truth would set them free. 
License they mean when they cry liberty." 

The Lutheran Observer submits to 
these foreigners of the baser sort the 
following little dialogue : 

"Why did you leave your own coun- 
try and come to this ? 

Because this is a better country than 
your own, and you came here to im- 
prove your condition. 

Why is this a better country than 
tl?at from which you came ? 

Because it has better institutions and 
laws, and among these the Sunday laws 
are the most important and valuable 
because they promote religion and mor- 
ality, and these promote in the highest 
degree the welfare, prosperity and hap- 
piness of the people." 

It is a picture worthy of a comic al- 
manac, these unwashed refugees from 
despotism, who never saw liberty in 
their lives, and wouldn't know it if they 
saw it, offering themselves as teachers 
of liberty to Americans. As usual, in 
such cases, we ask these professors of 



liberty, "Where did you graduate? 
Who was your teacher? " They answer, 
" Bismarck." (Laughter and applause.) 
Now we understand what they mean by 
"personal liberty," the liberty of Bis- 
marck, the liberty of that one person to 
do what he likes, regardless of the rights 
of all below him. The reversed " Bis- 
marcks " who come to this country be- 
lieve, each of them, in the "personal 
liberty" of one person to do. what he 
likes, regardless of the rights of all 
above him. We do not believe in any 
such "personal liberty" but in popular 
liberty, the liberty of the whole people, 
and the liberty of the person only so far 
as it is consistent with the liberties of 
the populace. (Applause.) 

As President Knox of the German 
Presbyterian Seminary has admirably 
said, "Immigrants of the better sort 
should be shown that instead of the 
privileged few that govern on the Con- 
tinent encroaching on the rights of the- 
many, the privileged many that govern 
in America may resist the greed and 
lawlessness of the few." 

How is it that we who are " runners,'" 
on arriving in a new State, do not go at 
once to a lawyer's office and read its 
laws in order to prevent being arrested 
for breaking them ? Equity that made 
those laws makes us obey them uncon- 
sciously. Equity is the centripetal force 
that keeps each one within his orbit so 
that he does not crash into the orbits of 
others. Your neighbor's fence is no- 
restraint upon your liberty if you do not 
wish to break into his yard. Law is 
made for the lawless (1 Tim. i., 9). You 
can do what you please if you please to. 
do what is right. 

The circle is a symbol, not of eternity 
only, but also of "personal liberty." 
"Personal liberty" is the space within 
an ample circle, smoothly bounded on 
all sides by the rights and liberties of 
others. As Rev. Dr. Oerter, of New 
York, put it, in a meeting of law-abiding^ 
Germans to "uphold the Sunday law,'^ 
" Personal liberty is the divine right to^ 
act without interference within the. 
limits of law." 

The principle that underlies all civD. 



THIS PLACE 

CLOSES 



ON 



SUNDAY 



OUT OF REGARD FOR 



RIBHTS OF CONSCIENCE 



AND 



LABOR'S RIGHT 



TO THE 



WEEKLY REST. 



rOVER.J 



[To be hung on the breast of every one who buys 
postage stamps, provisions, cigars, clothing, or what not, 
on the Sabbath.] 






C6 
CO 



(U 



AM 
BLIND! 

Oelfish 
hiftless 

REST AND LET REST ON 
THE REST DAY, 




CO 
CD 



99 



C/> 



C/9 



C/> 



[OVEE.] 



26 



27 



laws, the relation of liberty and law, 
was well expressed in the card which 
liung on the steps of a certain city hall : 
'•Gentlemen ivill not and others imist 
not loaf on these steps."' In a republic, 
law is the proclamation of what gentle- 
men *' will not" and others " must not" 
do. Sabbath laws proclaim that the 
humane ivill not and the inhuman must 
not deprive the toilers of their natural 
right to the weekly Rest Day, either to 
gratif\' their greed or lust, or even for 
amusement. 

In many places it has happened that 
the barbers have circulated among them- 
selves a signed agreement for Sunday 
closing, knowing that Sunday work, 
like swearing, is serving Satan without 
pay; that the same profit is made by 
the barbers of a town or city when they 
work six days as when they work seven. 
One barber refuses to sign, and so all the 
others think they must keep up their 
Sunday" work, lest some shiftless cus- 
tomer, on a cold or rainy Saturdaj^ 
may not come to his usual barber, 
because he knows tiiat another will be 
open on the morrow. So the liberty of 
one man or a few becomes the Sunday 
slavery of a whole trade. In such a 
case law comes in, and, bj^ "Sunday 
closing" of all the barber shops, pro- 
claims what all sensible barbers will do, 
and the one foolish barber must do, for 
his own good and the good of others. 
(Applause.) What is here said of bar- 
bers might be said also of bakers, laun- 
ders, grocers, — indeed of nearly all forms 
of Sunday work for gain. If it is foolish 
in the seller to spend seven days in 
making six days' sales, it is shiftless in 
the buyer to leave his Saturday buying 
over for the Sabbath, so making himself 
and others needless workmen the Rest 
Day, Here is a card : (See opposite.) 

It is sometimes said by opponents of 
Sabbath laws that "government has no 
right to dictate how a man shall spend 
the day." But at quarantine govern- 
ment proves its right to dictate how a 
}nan shall spend a fortnight, when the 
general good i'e({uires it. 

These are our answers to the "Per- 
sonal Liberty Leagues," and to those 



who are victims of their sophistries. It 
is surprising that any one should be de- 
ceived by them. An Irishman was walk- 
ing along the street and came to a 
building with eight sides. He had never 
seen one before and regarded it with 
great curiosity He stared at it until 
a man thrust his head out of a window 
and said: "Pat, what are you staring 
at? Did you think it was a church?" 
"'Well, sir,' said Pat, 'I didn't know 
but it was, until I saw the devil stick his 
head out of the window.' " 

When Anarchists, infidels and liquor 
dealers show their heads and "hands" 
in connection with the fight against the 
civil Sabbath, it is amazing that any 
one should not see that it is the Devil's, 
not the Lord's or Liberty's cause, even 
though a few sincere men who think 
they are doing God's service, join in the 
attack. 

AS TO ADVOCATES OF THE SATURDAY 
SABBATH, 

the apostate Jew, who does not keep 
that Sabbath, but pleads his neglected 
religion when arrested for opening his 
shop on the American Sabbath, should 
have no consideration from either Gen- 
tiles or genuine Jews ; but those who 
reg'ularly and religiously observe the 
Saturday Sabbath, by abstaining from 
labor and business, have received, not 
mere justice, but kindly and generous 
treatment, with few exceptions, in the 
laws, and still more in the customs, of 
the States. 

In the State of Arkansas, at one time, 
the exception in favor of Seventh da^' 
people having been taken advantage of 
by disreputable Jews to open saloons on 
the Sabbath, the exception was repealed 
— since restored. The fact that almost 
all the instances of alleged persecution 
of Seventh-day people are brought from 
that one State, and that one period, 
shows how g'enerously these people have 
been dealt with in other times and 
places. They are usually permitted to 
do any work on the first day of the 
week, except such as would destroy the 
general rest. They have not always 
reciprocated this generosity, but rather 
in many cases, have adopted the danger 



38 



ous anarchistic principle of keeping only 
the laws that suit them ; but this should 
not abate our effort to make our Sab- 
bath laws as favorable as possible to the 
minority. 

They agree with us that man has a 
natural right to rest one day in seven. 
It is only in the exigencies of debate 
that they argue that a man should 
work seven days for a week's wages. 
We go a step farther, and hold that in 
this age of corporations and of competi- 
tion, employees cannot be secure in the 
enjoyment of this natural right to a day 
of rest unless the State protects it. 
Louisiana for many years had ever- 
increasing Sunday dissipation and Sun- 
day toil because there was no Sabbath 
law, as the Seventh-day people desire 
should be the case everywhere. In 1886 
the people of Louisiana gave up the 
Seventh-day Adventist plan of the law- 
less Sunday, which had been weighed 
and found wanting. Let California do 
likewise. (Applause.) 

The Sabbattic Eden of the working- 
men can only be protected by the angel 
of law, as one has said, standing at the 
gate with flaming sword, to keep back 
the spoiler. The State has nothing to 
do with the arguments for and against 
"the change of day," — only with the 
wish of the majority, harmonized to the 
rights of the minority. 

With sweet reasonableness we should 
try to show these Seventh-day people the 
mistake of their literalness with reference 
to the seventh day of the week. Chaplain 
Crawford of the United States Navy re- 
cently told me of a voyage to Samoa, 
during which the ship on which he was 
serving crossed the ''Sunday line," 
180°, and as usual corrected its reckon- 
ing by adding a day. If he had been 
going the other way he would have lost 
a day. Arriving at Samoa he found that 
the missionaries, in their zeal for 
Christian work, had forgotten to make 
this change when they ci-ossed the line, 
years before, and so w^ere keeping the 
Christian Sabbath, the Lord's Dnj, on 
what was Saturday on shipboard. He 



preached for them on their Sabbath, and 
they came on shipboard to hear him 
again on his Sabbath ; and so for three 
weeks, during which time, between the 
ship and the shore, they had two Christ- 
mas days, two New Year's days, and 
six Sabbaths. (Laughter and ap- 
plause.) 

The proposed Congressional "Sunday 
rest law," at the utmost, would not 
affect more than one thousand of these 
Seventh-day people, as they cannot be 
in the mail or military service or in 
interstate commerce and yet keep Satur- 
day, and the further jurisdiction of the 
law is only in the District of Columbia 
and the Territories, in which very few of 
them reside. 

There is 

A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE 

involved in this matter. It is the ques- 
tion of two millions of people, as many 
as were delivered from the despotism of 
King George by the Eevolution, who 
are now in a more serious bondage, the 
Sunday slavery to King Greed, doing 
needless work for gain on the Sabbath 
with uneasy consciences. At Yorktown, 
in the very shadow of the monument 
that celebrates the close -of the Eevolu- 
tion, I asked a colored man who was in 
charge of the adjoining farm, pointing 
to a hole in a chimney, evidently made 
by grape or canister : "Was that done 
in this last war or in the Eevolution?" 
He answered, "I don't know; how long 
ago was the resolution ? " There was a. 
good deal of resolution in the Eevolu- 
tion, otherwise the soldiers who stained 
the snows of Valley Forge with the 
blood of their half-clad feet, would never 
have trod in triumph the heights of 
Yorktown. Victory came not by reso- 
lutions such- as are sometimes made on 
New Year's Day, and in religious con- 
ventions. It was resolution without 
the "s" that delivered those two mil- 
lions from King George, and like reso- 
lution will deliver the two millions who 
are in the worse bondage of Sabbathless 
toil to-day. (Applause.) 



Chief P. M. Arthur, of the Broiher- 
hood of Locomotive Engineers, in 
letter of Nov. 24tli, ISSS : *' I am in fa- 
A^or of any movement looking' to tlie 
abolishment of all Sunday labor other 
than works of mercy and necessity. It 
has been repeatedly demonstrated be- 
yond a question or doubt that all Sun- 
day traffic upon railways can be dispensed 
with without any detriment or injury to 
the interests of the Railway" Companies. 
Had I the authorits^ I would not allow a 
wheel to be turned between 12 o'clock 
Saturday night and 12 o'clock Sunday 
night." 

Brotlierlwod of Railroad Brakeraen 
and Locomotive Firemen at a Union 
meeting held at Bloomington, III., Jidy 
24, 1889: 

Whereas, the Sabbath was ordained 
for man and 

Whereas, All history shows the best 
state of societj- and the highest and best 
civiUzation when the hours of Sabbath 
were devoted to rest and a relief from 
labor, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That we, as railroad em- 
ployees, ask of the general public to fore- 
-o Sunday travel on railroads, and the 
demanding or requiring managers of 
railroads to run Sunday trains for 
freight traffic, to the end that we, who 
are willing to give six days and nights 
of our time to the faithful service of the 
public and to our employers, may liave 
the hours of the Sabbath with our fami- 
lies at our command, for the great good 
and comfort to ourselves from being at 
home with our famiUcs, and for church, 
Sabbath school and other privileges 
the Sabbath is designed to bring to us. 

Resolved, That we tender our sincere 
and hearty thanks to those presidents 
and managers of roads jwho have re- 
cently issued orders curtailing Sunday 
work, and we most respectfully ask all 
managers of roads to follow their ex- 
ample. 

Resolved, That as workingmen, we 
feel that we can do better service during 



the six daj^s of the week when we are 
permitted the rest and recuperation the 
Sabbath was designed to give us. 

Resolved, That we, as railway em- 
plo3^ees, pledge ourselves to be of the 
best posrible service in our power to the 
several railways which employ us, and 
to regard the interests of our employers 
when t\\ej show an interest in our best 
welfare by giving to us the best possible 
safety appliances and as much of Sun- 
day rest as the exigencies of railway 
transportation will admit.*' — From Am. 
Journal of Raihvay Appliances, Aug, 
IS, 1889. 

Gen. a, S. Diven, Elmira, N. Y., 
thirty years Managing Officer of Erie 
R. R., in letter of April 8, 1888 ; /' There 
is no valid excuse for railroad traffic on 
Sunday, either for mails, passengers or 
freights. Is the transmission of mails a 
necessity ? The best and most success- 
ful business men I have ever known 
never open their mails on Sunday. If 
there ever was a necessity for Sunday 
mail service, it ceased with the telegram. 
If there ever was a necessity for moving 
perishable articles on Sunday, it has been 
removed by the refrigerator car." 

Railroad Topics, April, 1889 : " The 
sentiment now sounding among the re- 
ligious and church going portion of the 
community proclaims that the running 
of freight and passenger trains on Sun- 
day is not a necessity." 

Chicago News, May 22, 1889 : "Now 
that the railway men have made a be- 
ginning they should give serious thought 
to the great Sunday problem which they 
have yet to solve. Tlie friends of Sab- 
bath observance object to Sunday trains 
and the employment of thousands of men 
to run them. Cannot the railways con - 
trive to give some more of their em- 
ployees one day of rest in every seven ? ' 

The Advance, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1889 : 
"Railroad corporations and managers 
have been especially responsible for an 
enormous amount of Sunday desecration 
and are peculiarly guilty in the matter 



30 



of defrauding thousands of individuals 
of their right to the enjoyment of the 
due tranquiUty and rest and peculiar 
privileges of the day. The public con- 
science if not also the moral sense of 
railway managers is beginning to be 
aroused. The movement for a law of 
Congress against Government work and 
Interstate Commerce on Sunday is fitted 
to enlist the co-operation of all good men 
as well as good womeuo The undertak- 
ing is by no means hopeless." 

Toledo Blade, July 6, 1889 : " This 
movement is one in which all should 
join, even if leaving the religious aspect 
out of the question. If the increase in 
Sunday work goes on, the laboring 
classes will find themselves compelled 
to work seven days a week for the wages 
of six days. That is the logical end of 
the matter." 

United Presbyterian, Pittsburg, Feb. 
7, 1889: " The bill now before Congress 
for the ' Sunday rest ' should have the 
support of the whole people. We 
are glad to see that the working 
people are alive to its importance. 
Already petitions representing all 
parts of the country and many or- 
ganizations have been presented urg- 
ing its enactment. Let them continue 
to flood the desks of Representa- 
tives and Senators until they feel the 
rushing current of an awakened public 
sentiment. With the Sabbath estab- 



lished in the army and navy, in the 
postal service and in interstate com- 
merce a better day will be near at 
hand." 

Hon. W. C. Breckenridge, M. C, in 
address at Neiv York, Jan. 28, 1888 : 
" In pleading for this Day of Rest we do 
not plead for idleness, for a day of wasted 
time; but that the world's work may 
be well and fitly done. It has been de- 
monstrated that beyond peradventure 
these bodies of ours, so fearfully and 
wonderfully made, including in them 
brain and soul, need and must have 
some periodic rest for recuperation. 
This tool which does the work, and 
which is of all tools the noblest and the 
most skillfully constructed, needs this 
period of cessation from labor to keep i^ 
in temper. There can be no greater 
mistake in the management of the great 
workshop of the world than to so abuse 
these human implements as to dull their 
edge and to render them less capable of 
performing their part. It is therefore a^ 
plea on the lowest possible ground of 
mere wise management of industrial 
implements that we demand for these 
implements of labor that they shall be 
so regulated as that the best possible re- 
sults may be obtained from their toil. 
This every manufacturer does with his 
engines, his machines and his bands. 
On the same principle we demand this 
same wisdom for these implements of 
industry." 



[Form of Petition.] 

^jCr tlXJe ^tatje ^jetXatje Xrf (Duplicate to House.) 

The undersigned, adult residents of the City (or town) of , 

believing that railroad corporations have no more right to use the Rest Day for 
works of gain, to the injury of their employees, than manufacturers or merchants, 
and recognizing a perilous tendency in legislatures all over the land to legislate in 
the interest of property more than of persons, earnestly petition your honorable 
body, in the interest not only of railroad men and their families, but also of the 
very Rest Day itself, which is imperilled by every inequity in its law, to forbid all 
Sunday work on railroads, except in cases of accident, so far as your power ex- 
tends, and to pass a resolution asking Congress to do likewise in its jurisdiction. 



Name. 



Occupation. 



LABOR'S RIGHT TO THE WEEKLY REST DAY. 



An Address by Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, 
Author of " The Sabbath for Man, 
WITH Special Reference to the 
Rights of Workingmen," at a Mass 
Meeting in the Academy of Music, 
ScRANTON, Pa., October 20, 1889— 
Hon. T. V. Powderly, Master 
Workman of the Knights of Labor, 
Presiding. 

I hold in my hand an ancient badge of 
Knig-hthood in labor, a saw that works 
only on the back stroke, which I brought 




from Nazareth, such an one as Christ 
used when He toiled as a "working- 
man " at His trade ; such as He laid 
down on the evening before the Sab- 
bath, saying gratefully, as He thought 
of the morrow's rest from toil, "The 
Sabbath was made for man." Surely 
no man who knows and honors the story 
of Christ can ever despise honest toil in 
himself or in any other man. (Ap- 
plause.) Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Chief 
of the National Bureau of Labor, has 
well said that the only solution of the 
labor problem lies in the application of 
His teachings to the conduct of labor 
and business. In this work, in which 
you are already a " Master Workman," 
I dub thee, T. V. Powderly, Knight of 
Labor, with the saw of Christ. (Ap- 
plause.) Your Knighthood is not that 
of the sword that destroys, but that of 
the saw that upbuilds. You tear down 
only tlie robber castles of rum and fraud, 
to build, in their stead, the homes of 
temperance and industr}^ as did the 
Carpenter of Nazareth. Surely the 
church that was founded by " the 
Carpenter" ought never to be out of 
sympathy with the true interests of 



workingmen, chief of which is the 
weekly Rest Day. 

Cooperation betv/een labor organiza- 
tions and churches in restricting Sunday 
work is the first wire toward a bridge 
over the chasm which in some parts of 
the land separates many of the succes- 
sors to Christ's trade from the successors 
to His name. The pretended working- 
man who works with nothing but his- 
jaw, the anarchist who is like a brazen 
bell, nothing in him but a noisy tongue — 
these we may not be able to unite with 
us by our bridge. An industrious son of 
Erin in California, being asked, "Are 
you a Dennis Kearney man ? " replied, 
"No, I'm a wurrkingman that wurrks." 
All workingmen that work will appre- 
ciate the Church's aid in preserving their 
Sabbath rest. 

Surely those workingmen are wisest 
and most consistent who refuse to hold 
the business meetings of their labor 
lodges and their picnics on the Sabbath. 
The Assemblies of the Knights of Labor 
in this city of their Chief, in deference 
to his wishes and wisdom, keep their 
own business as well as that of their 
employers out of the Rest Day, the 
Home Day. 

From a labor standpoint, a " Sunday 
law " is only a Six-day law, big brother 
of " Early closing," "the Saturday Half- 
holiday," "the Ten-hour law," "the 
Nine-hour law," and the expected addi- 
tion to the family, the unborn "Eight- 
hour law," which, if Mr. Powderly has 
his way, will not be the child of Violence 
but of Reason. 

In this company of brothers the Six- 
day law is the biggest and the best of 
all. No other restriction of labor can be 
equal in value to one unbroken day of 
general rest — the rest not of idleness 
])ut of congenial fellowship. 

Many friends of the Rest Day do it in- 
jury by not distinguishing between its 



21 



82 



religious and civil aspects. A colored 
preacher supplied a long--felt want in 
our language wfien lie said, " Brethren, 
what you want issanctifigumption. Get 
sanctifigumption if you don't get any- 
thing else." Sanctifigumption prevents 
a man who is speaking to a legislative 
committee or a labor organization or a 
citizens' meeting about the civil Rest 
Day from talking of " Sabbath profana- 
tion" or " Sabbath desecration " instead 
•of Sunday work and Sunday dissipation. 

In each law against Sunday work the 
people make a new Declaration of In- 
dependence. Labor's right to the weekly 
rest day is a part of the " right to life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
TVorking seven days per week shortens 
^'life," destroys "liberty," blots out 
" happiness." Sabbath bells are hbert^^ 
hells, proclaiming liberty to worship, 
liberty to rest, liberty for fellowship and 
for self-improvement — one day's inde- 
pendence of human mastership. Those 
are " white slaves " indeed who have one 
more day of toil per week than was re- 
quired of the black slaves, emancipated 
by the war, whose every week had in it 
the oasis of a Sabbath for rest and fel- 
lowship and religion. (Applause.) Those 
who are robbed of their weekly Rest 
Day might as well have been slaves 
of Pharaoh for all they get out of 
Christian civilization. 

Henry George has well said . that 
Moses was the first labor reformer, and 
the fourth commandment his chief 
labor reform. Moses said to the employ- 
er, "I have proclaimed this law that thy 
man-servant and thy maid-servant may 
rest as well as thou." The whole Sabbatic 
system of Moses was a scheme to miti- 
gate the sorrows of labor and poverty. 
It might appropriately be published as 
"novel" under the title of "Looking 
Backward," to rival Bellamy's. The 
seventh day, the seventh month, the 
seventh year, the year after seven times 
seven, were each rich in benefits to the 
poor and toilers. This is beautifully ex- 
plained in "Eight Studies on the Lord's 
Day " (p. 135). 

Justice Field, of the United States 
Supreme Court, in a famous opinion. 



written when he was a member of the 
Supreme Court of California, afterwards 
adopted as the voice of that court, calls 
attention to the fact that Sabbath 
laws are not so much for those 
who can choose their time to rest, as 
for the protection of labor against 
capital, for the defense of labor's nat- 
ural right to a weekly Rest Day. 
"The Lord's Day," is also "The Peo- 
ple's Day." 

If the simple farmers of Palestine, un- 
usually religious and humane, when 
every master and servant met daily face 
to face, needed the restraint of a six-day 
law, much more do employers in this 
age of corporations, engaged in keenest 
competition. 

The Pennsylvania Railroad has 75,000 
employees, whose condition affects a 
quarter of a million in their families. 
There is no better railroad corporation, 
but what chance is there of one of those 
250,000 drops getting any individual con- 
sideration for his right to the Home Day 
from the ten thousand corporate souls 
that divide almost to invisibility the re- 
sponsibilities of that great corporation ? 
But for the six-day laws, the corporation 
that was not " soulless," the competitor 
who was not a " cut throat," the hu- 
mane employer who desired to give 
the weekly Rest Day to his employees, 
would often feel that to dismiss them 
for one day, would be to dismiss them 
for all days, by giving the " cut-throat" 
with whom he was competing the upper 
hand. Modern business, alas, is a war- 
fare. If the soldiers on either side are 
to rest, law must proclaim and enforce 
for one day in each week " the truce of 
God." 

Do you say, " Each man is at lib- 
erty to worship or not to worship, to 
work or not to work, on Sundays " ? Nay, 
he is at liberty to give up his "job" 
when jobs are few and hard to get, and 
to go out into the army of the unem- 
ployed. (Applause.) 

"I had rather be right than Presi- 
dent"— or servant of a Sabbath-breaking 
corporation. No man should sacrifice 
his conscience, his manhood, to keep his 
place. 



S3 



TJTITHafirm reliance upon God, I hereby 
make my 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
against KING GREED, whose Sunday 
work I pledge my sacred honor never to 
do. 

[Signed,] 



The man who pleads as an excuse for 
Sunday work that he ' ' must make a 
hving," should remember that the bar- 
tender makes the same plea. I have 
searched the world over m vam for an 
affirmative answer to the question, 
"■ Did you ever know a man financially 
ruined by refusing- to do Sunday work ? " 
I have found scores of instances where 
courageous conscientiousness in this 
matter led to promotion, none where it 
led to poverty. (Applause.) 

But sc^iety should not be so con- 
structed that only heroes can survive. 
Gladstone has admirably said that it is 
the province . of law to make it as easy 
as possible to do right and as hard as 
possible to do wrong. The six-day laws 
make it as hard as possible for the 
employer to destroy, as easy as possi- 
ble for the emploj^ee to maintain, his 
natural right to the weekly Rest Day, 
and his related rights of conscience. 

In this matter it is important that 

CONGRESS SHOULD SET A RIGHT 
EXAMPLE 

both as a legislator and as an employer. 
It is bad enough that Congressmen are 
so often examples of lawlessness in their 
Sunday junketings. 

But worse than these personal exam- 
ples, is the example of Government in 
its corporate action. While the United 
States keeps its Post Office open on the 
Sabbath for business, right in the center 
of the principal .street of each town, it 
will be next to impossible for local re- 
form permanently to close the saloon on 
one side of it and the shoe shop on the 
other, that are only following the Gov- 
ernment's example, and trying to catch 
a little trade from those who are going 
for their Sunday mail. WhiJo the Gov- 



ernment sends its Sunday mail train 
crasliing through the laws of God and 
man, it will be very difficult to stop the 
other trains that are following" in its 
wake. (Applause.) 

Those who say of Sunday work, " This 
is not a matter for Congress, but only 
.for the States," proclaim their own 
ignorance, for no legislators except 
those of Congress have the power to re- 
lease from Sunday work the soldiers or 
the postmen or the vast army of toilers 
in interstate commerce, or the two 
hundred thousand people of the District 
of Columbia. 

John Brig'ht defined agitation as " the 
marshalling of the Nation's conscience 
to right its laws." Such a marshalling 
is the great " Sunday Rest Petition." 

In 1883, and for some time previous, 
the "International Sabbath Associa- 
tion," Rev. Yates Hickey, Secretary, 
circulated petitions against Sunday 
mails and Sunday parades of United 
States troops, but the time did not seem 
to be ripe, and only a few thousand sig- 
natures were secured by this earnest 
pioneer. 

In 1884 a busy New York pastor en- 
larged the petition, and again later, 
until it read as follows : 

Senate Petition from State of 

County of 

City or Town of ^ 

Number of Petitioners 

FOR A SUNDAY REST BILL. 
To the United States Senate : 

The undersigned adult residents of 
the United States, 21 years of age or 
more, hereby earnestly petition your 
honorable body to pass a bill forbidding, 
in the United States mail and njilitary 
service, and interstate commerce, and 
in the District of Columbia and the 
Territories, all Sunday traffic and work, 
except works of real necessity and 
mercy, and such private work by those 
who regularly and religiously observe 
another day of the week by abstaining 
from labor and business, as will neither 
interfere with the general rest nor with 
public worship. 

Name. (Prefix Mr., Mrs. or Miss) 

Occupation . . . f 

(Duplicate for^ouse of Representatives.) 

This pastor's work was hardly begun 
when the Woman's. Christian Tem- 



34 



perance Union established its Sab- 
bath Observance Department, with 
an Oberhn woman, Mrs. J. C. Bateham, 
of Plainesville, Ohio, as its superintend- 
ent. She is the Deborah of us all in this 
fight by snowstorms of petitions against 
the Sunday chariots of iron. Whenever 
a, good thing- happens, be sure "there's . 
a woman in the case." The infant 
petition, which had seemed likely to die 
young of neglect, was passed over to 
her, and, under her nurture and train- 
ing, and that of her associates all over 
the country, in the course of three years, 
it grew into a millionaire, aud then, of 
course, it was sent to that popular resort 
of millionaires, the United States Senate. 
(Laughter and applause.) 

It is significant that these petitions for 
"Sunday Rest" were referred by the 
Senate to its Committee on Education 
and Labor. We are thus reminded 
that 

THE AMERICAN SABBATH IS AN EDUCATOR, 

nardly second to the common school 
and its best supplement. Four times 
seven is twenty-eight ; that is, one 
seventh of the days in twenty-eight 
years make four years — more time for 
thought and self-improvement than a 
college course, for college students 
devote no inconsiderable part of their 
four years to football et al. The British- 
American Sabbath is the workingman's 
college, without which toilers could not 
qualify themselves for self-government, 
but would remain, like the adult infants 
of Continental Europe, content to take 
Sunday amusements in place of liberty. 
Reformers of illiteracy cannot afford to 
ignore the relation of quiet Sabbaths, 
protected against both toil and dissipa- 
tion, to the diffusion of knowledge and 
of conscientiousness, without which 
there will be enough "blocks of five," 
too ignorant to resist the sophistries, too 
immoral to resist the bribes, of the 
demagogue, to write the death warrant 
of the Republic on the back of its ballots. 
(Applause.) 

But it was doubtless, chiefly because 
the petitions call for a 



LABOR REFORM 

that they were referred to that Com- 
mittee on Education and Labor, Hon. 
Carroll D. Wright, in his report on Sun- 
day Labor in Massachusetts, shows, from 
the standpoint of the very master of 
Labor Reform, that it has no other 
department more important than the 
protection of employees against the 
Egyptian bondage of Sabbathless toil. 
Besides ministers, sextons, singers, doc- 
tors, druggists, nurses, undertakers,, 
milkmen, household and hotel servants, 
and all others whose Sunday labor can, 
by the utmost stretch of terms, be con- 
sidered as work of necessity or mercy, 
there are two millions — it is an under- 
estimate — engaged in needless Sunday 
work for gain — one in every six families. 
The average is not so great as that in 
the East, but much greater in the " Wild 
West," where in some cases, it is said, 
the communion has to be held on 
Sabbath evening, because in the morn- 
ing "the deacons are all down in the 
mines." A law forbidding Sunday work 
in the Government's mail and military 
service, and its wider domains of inter- 
state commerce and the Territories, 
would release most of this two millions 
from Sunday slavery at a stroke, as one 
turn of a bar opens a whole row of 
prison cells. 

One of the most hopeful aspects of the 
war against Sunday v/ork is the fact 
that, in our country, labor organiza- 
tions are awakening to their peril in 
season to retain the weekly Rest Day, 
which their fellows on the Continent are 
struggling, all too late, to regain. At 
the hearing given on April 8th, 1888, by 
the Senate's Committee on Education 
and Labor, to the petitioners who 
had appealed to Congress in behalf of 
the imperilled Sabbath rest, it was pri- 
vately suggested by a member of that 
Committee to the person in charge of 
the hearing in behalf of the petitioners, 
that the petitions, up to that time, had 
come chiefly from churches, and that 
labor organizations should also and espe- 
cially be asked to consider the matter, 
as their petition would be still more in 



35 



l"iu3ntial. The object of the petition 
\. as accordingly explained to the Cen- 
tral Labor Union of New York Cit}^ a 
congress of New York's labor organiza- 
tions, which, after discussion and delib- 
eration, unanimously voted to indorse 
the petition. (Applause.) The very next 
day, before this resolution reached 
Washington, Senator Henry W. Blair 
introduced his original " Sunday Rest 
Bill." Our petitions have not been, to 
any considerable extent, for that partic- 
ular bill, but for a law somewhat like it. 
The general purpose of the bill — not the 
bill itself — was indorsed, the day follow- 
ing its introduction, by the Presbyterian 
General Assembly (North), then repre- 
senting seven hundred and forty-four 
thousand members. The Assembly also 
appointed its quota of charter members 
to organize the American Sabbath Union, 
a part of whose work is to carry the pe- 
tition I have quoted to success. Since 
then the petition has been indorsed, 
after deliberation and discussion, by the 
International Convention of the Brother- 
hood of Locomotive Engineers, the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Knights of Labor, 
by the Southern Baptist Convention, by 
the General Synod of the Evangelical 
Lutheran Church, by the Congregational 
Council, by the Cumberland and South- 
ern Presbyterian Assemblies, by many 
Methodist conferences, by Cardinal Gib- 
bons, by churches of nearly all creeds, 
and by many other organizations of la- 
bor and religion. The petition is un- 
questionably the largest ever presented 
to any government, and unique also in 
being the only one in which labor or- 
ganizations and churches of all creeds 
have generally united. (Applause.) 

A labor leader has suggested that rep- 
resentatives of tlie churches and of labor 
organizations should meet for a frank 
conference to find how far they are 
agreed. It is certain that those who 
peacefully seek a new social order can 
not safely leave out motive and depend 
on machinery. Tlie trouble with the 
present state of society is not so much 
its taxes or its tenements as its selfish- 
ness. Environment will not remove 
that. The very things which the Sab- 



bath brings to men are those which are 
needed to lead capital and labor out of 
their deadly conflict into just coopera- 
tion. An ox and a stallion were shipped 
in the same freight car, separated by an 
extemporized partition. During the 
journey this gave way, and as the train 
halted, the animals were found in deadly 
conflict, each mortally wounded. At 
length a kick from the aristocratic stal- 
lion killed the plebian ox, but the next 
moment the gored stallion fell and died. 
So will end the conflict of labor and cap- 
ital in mutual destruction unless cooper- 
ation takes the place of conflict. Only 
the application of the principles of Jesus 
Christ to the conduct of labor and busi- 
ness can bring this peaceful revolution. 
The Duke of Wellington, referring to 
athletics, said : "Waterloo was gained at 
the public schools." The revolution of 
society is to be won in the people's col- 
lege — the Anierican Sabbath. 

A critic of our movement has said : 
"Petitions are all waste paper, no more 
eifective than cheap handbills thrown 
into street doors." This is the echo of 
the so-called "practical statesman " who 
calls our work, " Sunday-school i:)olitics." 
But when there are no petitions he plays 
another tune : ' ' Who wants this ? — there 
are no petitions." Whatever the discount 
on the old style petitions made up of 
unclassified names, I appeal to you 
whether our new form of petitioning is 
mere waste paper. Are the deliberate 
votes of indorsement on these petitions 
by Congregational, Baptist and Metho- 
dist Pi-eachers' Meetings, by Evangelical 
Alliances, by General Assemblies — are 
these and thousands more of such peti- 
tions from local churches of all creeds- 
no more influential upon Congressmen 
than the handbills thrown in at their 
doors ? Are the signatures of P. M. Ar- 
thur and T. V. Povvderly, attached by 
vote of the Brotherhood of Locomotive 
Engineers and the Knights of Labor, 
and the oflficial indorsement of hun- 
dreds of local labor organizations — are 
these also worth no more than a news- 
paper's rejected poetry? Is Cardinal 
Gibbons' signature on the petition of no 
weight in Congress? And what of the 



36 



thousands of letters that were hurried 
to Washington, Hke an ever increasing 
snowstorm, after the American Sabbath 
Union sent out information that the 
friends of the Sabbath who desired the 
hearing on the Sunday Rest Bill should 
apply to their Representatives in Con- 
gress — letters that not only asked for 
the document, but many of them for 
the passage of the law ? If the petitions 
of all kinds are so ineffective, what led 
Congress to order three editions of the 
heai'ing in quick succession, making 42,- 
000 in all — twelve thousand more (the 
Government Printer tells me) than his 
largest issues of documents on any other 
public question at the public expense? 
At the Document Room of the Senate I 
was told, when the first edition of about 
two thousand was not yet printed, that 
fifty times as many would not supply 
the orders already sent to him from Sen- 
ators for their constituents who had 
written for them." 

When I told a certain preacher in New 
Tork that there had been introduced in 
the Senate a "Sunday Rest Bill" such 
as we had been asking for so long, he 
answered, "You can't pass it." That 
kind of " can't ''^ is cursing the churches 
more than the kind so often condemned. 
The law can be passed if the churches 
and labor organizations that have not 
indorsed the petition, promptly join 
those that have. [Applause.] 

Congressmen ought to lead off in po- 
litical, as ministers do in moral, reforms. 
But, in fact, ours is a wheelbarrow gov- 
-ernment that goes ahead in legislation 
only when it is irresistably pushed from 
behind. [Laughter and applause.] But 
when most of the churches have laid 
hold together of one of the handles of 
the wheelbarrow, and most of the labor 
organizations have put their strong 
hands together on the other. Congress 
will not tip this bill out on its refuse 
heap, but will allow it to go throiigh to 
enactment. [Applause.] Let every 
friend of the civil Sabbath of rest push 
a little by collecting signatures for our 
petition, and by getting every organiza- 
tion or convention with which he is con- 



nected or can influence, to pass at once 
a resolution indorsing it. 

" Let us help it all we can 

Every woman, every man, 
That good time coming ; 

Smallest helps, if rightly given, 
Make the impulse stronger, 

'Twill be strong enough one day, 
Wait [and work] a little longer." 

That part of the petition which asks for 

A SABBATH LAW FOR THE DISTRICT OF 
COLUMBIA 

surely ought to be granted by Con- 
gress without delay, since all of its 
members, except those from California,: 
Arizona and Idaho, represent States hav- 
ing such a law. Let stately, beautiful 
Washington speedily become in its 
Legislation, what it is in almost every- 
thing else, the model city of the world. 

The recent renewal of the demand for 
a Sabbath law for the Capital has been 
prompted by the sight of laborers dig- 
ging in its streets on the Sabbath for the 
construction of a street railway. The 
limping defense rests oh two deformed 
feet ; first, that the work has been hin- 
dered by much rain ; second, that some 
poor men have received extra wages ! 
If men are to make reprisals on the 
Sabbath for all the week days when 
work was hindered by weather, then this 
year alone has put a third or fourtli 
mortgage on nearly all the Sabbaths for 
the remainder of this century. As to 
wages for the poor, it is enough to re- 
call the fact that where work is allowed 
on all the seven days the wages are less 
per week than where the six day law of 
the Sabbath prevails. 

AS TO THE TERRITORIES, 

Although each of them has some sort 
of legislature, it is to be remembered 
that Congress has absolute jurisdiction 
over them as much as over the District 
of Columbia, and frequently supple- 
ments their frontier legislation with a 
view of giving good citizens in the 
Territories as adequate protection as if 
they had the more mature government 
of States. The United States protects 
the homes of Utah against the Sunday 
saloons of Ogden as well as against the 



37 



Mormon harems of Salt Lake. Why 
should not the compulsory education in 
hygiene which Congress has given to all 
the Territories be supplemented b}'^ the 
practical hygiene of restful Sabbaths'? 
So far from resenting such legislation as 
an interference Avith Territorial home 
rule the good citizens of the Territories 
everywhere petition Congress for it. 

SABBATH REST FOR SOLDIERS 

Proclaimed by the President, needs to 
be perfected by Congress by the stop- 
ping of parades, as well as inspections of 
arms, and also of secular concerts by 
military bands. 

SUNDAY MAILS 

are a much more serious matter. There 
are in round numbers, 150,000 men in 
the mail service — about half of the Gov- 
ern! ent's "civil list." Nearly all of the 
postal half do more or less Sunday work, 
while the other half rests. Hath not a 
postman flesh, conscience, a home, a 
church, that he alone of the manifold 
servants of the Government should be 
denied his Sabbath ? The evil appears 
greater still when it is remembered that 
the Government, whose decisions are 
the only standard of right and wrong 
to most of our people, is presenting 
this harmful example of needless Sun- 
day work at 60,000 offices, leaving hardly 
a hamlet in the country untouched by 
the contagion. 

In these days when we hurl so much 
denunciation at corporations, it is too 
often forgotten that every citizen is a 
corporator in the largest and most 
"soulless" of them all. The Govern- 
ment, as the chief of all corporations, 
ought to be a model to all others. But 
I had occasion to say, at our first hear- 
ing before the Senate's Committee, that 
Congress was " the very Pharaoh among 
employ ersy Certain horse cars, on 
which men were worked eighteen hours 
a day (counting the hours for meals), 
were appropriately called by the em- 
ployees of the line, " man -killers." That 
corporation reduced its hours to twelve, 
h'aving tlie United States post-offices, 
with their requirement of thirteen and 
sixteen hours work per day as the 



champion "man-killers" of the land. 
Think of your employees — you, the peo- 
ple, ate the controlling stockholders of 
the United States corporation. Congress- 
men being your directors, and the Post- 
master General one of your managers — 
think of your employees being called 
from bed at five o'clock in the morning in 
order to report at the post-office at a quar- 
ter to six, and kept so constantly at work 
on heavy routes that breakfast and din- 
ner must both consist of sandwiches, 
eaten out of the pocket while on the 
march, with supper, the only meal at 
home on alternate days, at ten o'clock 
at night, and that too alone — the babies 
that were left asleep in the morning 
being asleep again on the return in the 
evening ; and besides all this, night 
watching and Sunday work — these car- 
riers not even being allowed unbroken 
Sabbaths in which to become acquainted 
with the children whom they had 
scarcely seen awake on the other days 
of the week. 

These evils have been largely reduced 
by the " Carriers' Eight-hour Law," but 
a six-day law is still needed for our 
postal service. One whole day in each 
week for rest and home and thought is 
the constitutional right of every man — 
using the word "constitutional" with 
reference to our physical and civil and 
religious constitutions — and such a day 
is worth more every way than the 
same amount of extra leisure doled out 
through a Sabbathless week. 

Those Christians who use or defend 
Sunday mails may well hang their heads 
in shame as they read that in Septem- 
ber last in India, Hindus and Parsees 
joined with British residents of Bombay 
in protesting, on humanitarian grounds, 
against the proposed dispatch of the 
Australian mail on the Sabbath, which 
even the heathen have learned to value 
as a surcease from toil. 

It is not generally known that both 
Sunday mails and Sunday trains are 

WAR MEASURES ABSURDLY CONTINUED 
IN TIMES OF PEACE. 

Sunday mails were ordered by Con- 
gress on April 30, 1810, and were justi- 



38 



jfied by Congress and tolerated by the 
people only because war was momently 
expected with Great Britain. This 
brought in the mail trains, the only 
trains tolerated, except milk trains, for 
many years. In 1828-29, when there 
was a great popular uprising against 
iSunday mails, curiously enough, it was 
assumed by the Postmaster General 
of that day, who is said to have been 
under Seventh-day Baptist influence, 
that to repeal this war measure would 
he religious legislation. He argued 
for neutrality on religious matters on 
the part of the State, apparently 
Mind to the fact that the petitioners 
were only asking the repeal of a law 
which was originally an act against re- 
ligion. But Congress was fooled by his 
shallow sophistry, and, on the plea of 
neutrality, renewed its hostilities toward 
religion. 

The opponents of Sunday mails 
claimed that they were infringements 
not only on the rights of Christians, but 
also on the rights of the original States, 
which had given Congress, in the Con- 
stitution, no permission to destroy their 
Sabbaths. This claim was about to be 
pressed in the Supreme Court, when 
war again, this time in Mexico, re-en- 
forced the enemies of the Sabbath b}- 
drawing attention to new questions. The 
"War of 1812 having started the Sunday 
mail trains, the War of 1845 defended 
them, and then the War of 1861 added 
other Sunday ti'ains to carry soldiers 
and their supplies. 

Advocates of peace may well put into 
their catalogue of the evil legacies of 
war, the weary toil, the saddened homes, 
the premature deaths, the corrupted 
morals, caused by Sunday mails and 
Sunday trains. 

It is not, then, those who ask the dis- 
continuance of these old war measures 
but those who ask their continuance who 
urge a strange thing. 

You ask, " What if a letter calling a 
son to the bedside of his dying mother 
should be delayed twenty-four hours by 
the discontinuance of Sunday mails?" 
O, belated qviestioner, did you never hear 
of the telegraph, soon to be the people's 



" fast mail ? " To use the telegraph for 
such letters need not make Sunday work 
for telegraphers, for a letter that is to 
have a Sunday delivery must be mailed 
not later than Saturday, when a tele- 
gram would carry the message before 
the end of that day ; and a letter put in 
the Sunday mail will not reach its desti- 
nation any sooner than a Monday tele- 
gram. 

No wise man ever depends on the mail 
for speed. Recently it took fifty-five 
days for a letter from California to reach 
me at New York. No matter whose fault 
it was, that was the fact. Suppose it 
had been a summons to a death bed ? 
Shorter delays are common. The tele- 
graph, run as a private monopoly, is slow 
and often inaccurate, but the onl}'" proper 
reliance for emergencies. Toronto keeps 
one telegraph office open on the Sab- 
bath. Whether even that is needed is 
an open question. It is not a question 
whether the Sunday opening of more 
than one office in a city is unnecessary. 

You say, " To stop the mails twenty- 
four hours in these days would cause a 
congestion of business." The answer to 
this prophecy is not a counter prophecy, 
but history. Toronto, the " Queen City " 
of the world in Sabbath observance, and 
hardly second to any in its rapid growth 
and solid prosperity, a city of 300,000 
population, allows its postal servants to 
share the general rest, closing its post 
office to the public from seven of Satur- 
day evening to seven of Monday morn- 
ing, and stopping all work except that 
of the watchman through the entire 
twenty-four hours of the Eest Pay. To-^ 
ronto finds that this gain to the post 
office employees results in no loss to any 
one. If a larg-er city is wanted, take 
this: "Within a radius of five miles 
from the general post-office of London 
no inland letters are collected, carried, 
sorted or dispatched on the Lord's day." 
(Sabbath for Man, p. 286.) If all mail 
trains stopped on the Rest Day, and it 
were made in fact a dies non, it would 
be equally fair to all competitors, and 
give a man the same average mail on 
Monday morning as on Saturday, instead 
of causing " a congestion of business " 



>9 



by flooding- him with a double portion. 
The watchman is the only postal serv- 
ant whose Sundaj" work can be justified 
either by Divine or American law. [Ap- 
plause]. 

The arg-ument against interstate 

SUNDAY TRAINS, 

a greater evil born of the Sundaj^ 
mail and of War, is short and conclus- 
ive. 

A recent letter from the Interstate 
Commerce Commission estimates the 
number of men in railroad service in 
the United States as " more than a mill- 
ion." Half a million more are em- 
ployed on vessels and canals. A few 
thousands of this million and a half do 
no Sunday work, but their number is 
more than balanced by the Sunday 
work of those who are connected with 
those departments of transportation 
that have not been counted — street rail- 
ways, stages, liveries, local and general 
expresses, railroad news companies, 
railroad restaurants and private ticket 
offices. An observant traveler cannot 
fail to note also that on the Sabbath the 
streets leading to railroads in many 
■cities look like a market day, every 
.■shopkeeper at work to catch the trade of 
those who are going and coming. So 
spreads the evil leaven of the Sunday 
train. 

Recently a score of American rail- 
roads, and one, at least in France (the 
Lyons and Mediterranean) have reduced 
the number of their Sunday trains. The 
surprised public has been somewhat too 
■complimentary for these " small fa- 
vors." These reductions are only a 
beginning. The Sunday trains that re- 
main are not only sins against God, but 
also crimes against man. 

Thirty-one railroad managers, in re- 
sponse to printed questions, have said 
to me in writing that all railroad trains 
could be stopped on Sunday with no 
money loss to offset the great gains in 
health and happiness. (Applause.) The 
only way to make any reduction that 
will abide is to make it on the only just 
plan to all concerned, namely, to stop 



all Sunday work except work of real 
necessity and mercy. 

Excuse them how you will, these Sun- 
day trains are run only to make money, 
to fatten the bank accounts of million- 
aires already too much favored by our 
laws. If any work for gain, not also a 
work of necessity or mercy, is to be al- 
lowed on the Sabbath, all such work 
should be equitably allowed. The law 
that forbids a poor widow to sell whole- 
some books on the Sabbath, while per- 
mitting a millionaire to sell railroad 
tickets, is itself a crime. Anarchy fat- 
tens on such injustice. 

"But," you say, " what if the father, 
hastening to the bedside of his dying 
son should be stopped twenty-four hours 
and so should be too late." I answer, 
that it is better that a son should die 
now and then, without the comfort of 
his father's presence, which could not 
save his life, than that hundreds of rail- 
road men should die before their time 
every year, through the exhaustion and 
demoralization of their Sunday toil. 

You excuse the Sunday train by say- 
ing, "Tlie public demands it." Say 
rather, " The pocket demands it, in 
blindness to its own interests." Ex- 
periments on many railroads this year 
in decreasing Sunday trains (see "Re- 
cent Progress of Sabbath Reform 
Among Railroads," by Edwin C. Beach, 
published in pamphlet by Ohio State 
Journal, Columbus, Ohio), show that 
money has in many cases been saved, 
and in none lost. The gains to the homes 
of railroad men cannot be told. In 
figuring out even the financial balance, 
we are not to leave out of account the 
depreciation of railrfiad stocks by mill- 
ions, due in part, as Judge Cooley and 
Charles Frances Adams and President 
Stickney intimate, to the lack of com- 
mercial honor among railroad managers. 
Sunday work wrecks not only trains but 
consciences, and in both cases there 
comes a money loss as well as a moral 
one. 

If the public "demand" Sunday 
trains, how is it the^'' have to be ca- 
joled into them by fi-antic advertising 
at one-fifth the usual rates? Thousands 



40 



who use Sunday trains because "they 
would run anyway," instead of "de- 
manding " their continuance, have pe- 
titioned for a law to stop them. He is 
deaf, indeed, to the signs of the times 
who has not heard, in the railroad riots 
of recent years, a "demand" loud as 
the roar of Waterloo, not for more Sun- 
day trains, but for more justice to rail- 
road men, for more culture of conscience 
by railroad men, who have in their 
power the property which is at once the 
most exposed and the most important 
to the general welfare of any in the 
country. The " Eound House," with 
its mighty engines is a giant's castle. 
One of these iron giants can kill more 
people at one blow than any giant of 
the fables. How important that they 
who guide them should be sober, faith- 
ful men ! In a recent year there was 
wanting only what was for a time 
feared, a word of command from the 
railroad King Arthur, ordering a gener- 
al strike of locomotive engineers, to 
plunge the whole country into a com- 
mercial and social anarchy, of which 
1877 and the Chicago bombs, and the 
New York blizzard are but gentle hints. 
I believe the fears were groundless, 
and that our King Arthur will use his 
authority only in knightly justice to all. 

The reason that more frequent appeals 
for release from Sunday work are not 
made by railroad men themselves is that 
past appeals have seemed to be in vain. 
The plea of the Brotherhood of Loco- 
motive Engineers, in the days of the 
first Vanderbilt, for the stopping of all 
Sunday freights, and the subsequent 
plea of four hundred and fifty of Mr. 
Wm. H. VanderbTlt's engineers, a few 
years since, for their weekly rest and 
their rights of conscience, for their own 
physical benefit and the moral benefit 
and happiness of their families, stand as 
the perpetual and pitiful appeals of all 
Sunday toilers for emancipation from 
their Sunday slavery. 

Chief Arthur told me that Mr. Wm. 
H. Vanderbilt made no objection on the 
ground that stopping such trains would 
be either impracticable or unprofitable. 
The only objection was competition. 



He replied, "I will stop Sunday trains, 
if others will." "Others will''' only 
when all must, at the dictate of Congress, 
one of whose chief functions it is to save 
citizens from being crushed between the 
upper and nether millstones of compet- 
ing corporations, with hearts of rock. 
A son-in-law of Mr. Vanderbilt is au- 
thority for the statement that the latter 
made an effort at that time to get other 
railroad managers to join him in a re- 
duction of Sunday trains, but in vain. 
In a published interview Mr. Depew 
gives it out that competition is the only 
reason that recent reductions are not 
greater. All of which shows that Con- 
gress as an outside umpire must stop the 
Sunday work of all the competing lines 
together, if it is to be stopped at all. 

Many railroad men would be glad to 
have their Sabbaths for rest and home 
and thovTght even at a reduction of one- 
seventh in their wages, but if, as the 
engineers stated in the appeal referred 
to, and as many managers admit, they 
can " do more work in six days per 
week than in seven, and do it better," 
or even as much, they will be supported 
by the public in demanding the same 
wages for six days which they now 
receive for seven. 

The very heart of ancient knighthood, 
whose spirit the Knights of Labor pro- 
fess to embody, is unselfish defense of 
others who have been wronged, as if 
their wrongs were our own. Surely 
then no true Knight of Labor, with that 
" bitter cry " of the engineers ringing in 
his ears, can use a Sunday train. The 
true Knight of Labor will find his 
Sabbath rest in some of the many ways 
that will not destroy the rest of his 
fellows. I have heard of but one labor 
organization voting against the great 
" Sunday Rest Petition " — an assembly, I 
will not say of musicians, but of brass 
blowers, who care more for two dollars 
each from a Sunday picnic than for the 
release of two millions of their fellows 
from needless Sunday toil, and yet are 
brazen enough to call themselves 
" Knights of Labor." 

When the Sunday Rest Petition " was 
under discussion in a meeting of loco- 



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HOW SUNDAY 

A few years since some 450 of his locomotive 
engineers petitioned Mr. William H. Vander- 
bilt for "the cessation of Sunday labor." 
After pointing out how Sunday running had 
become "a great hardship," they continue : 
" We have borne this grievance patiently, hop- 
ing every succeeding year that it would de- 
crease. We are willing to submit to any rea- 
sonable privation, mental or physical, to assist 
the officers of your company to achieve a flnan- 
■cial triumph ; but after a long and weary ser- 
Tice, we do not see any signs of relief, and we 
are forced to come to you with our trouble, 
and most respectfully ask you to relieve us 
irom Sunday labor, so far as it is in your power 
to do so. Our objections to Sunday labor are: 

(1) This never-ending labor ruins our health 
and prematurely makes us feel worn out like 
old men, and we are sensible of our inability 
to perform our duty as well when we work to 
an excess. 

(2) That the customs of all civilizedcountries 
as well as all laws, human and Divine, recog- 
nize Sunday as a day of rest and recuperation ; 
and notwithstanding intervals of rest might be 
arranged for us on other days than Sunday, 
we feel that by so doing we v\^ouldbe forced to 
•exclude ourselves from all church, family and 
social privileges that other citizens enjoy. 

(3) Nearly all of the undersigned have chil- 
dren that they desire to have educated in every- 
thing that will tend to make them good men 
and women, and we cannot help but see that 
our example in ignoring the Sabbath day has 
a very demoralizing influence upon them. 

(4) Because we believe the best interests of 
the comjaany we serve, as well as ours, will be 
promoted thereby, and because we believe 
locomotive engineers should occupy as high 
social and religious positions as men in any 
other calling. We know the question will be 
xjonsidered : How can this Sunday work be 
avoided with the immense and constantly in- 
creasing traffic ? We have watched this mat- 
ter for the past twenty years. We have seen 
it grow from its infancy until it has arrived at 
its now gigantic proportions, from one train 
on the Sabbath until we now have about thirty 
€ach way ; and we do not hesitate in saying 
that we can do as much work in six days with 
the seventh for rest, as is now done. It is a 
fact observable by all connected with the im- 
mediate running of freight trains that on Mon- 
day freight is comparatively light ; Tuesday it 



TOILERS FEEL. 

strengthens a little, and keeps increasing until 
Saturday, and Sundays are the heaviest of 
the week. The objection may be offered that 
if your lines stop, the receiving points from 
other roads will be blocked up. In reply, we 
would most respectfully suggest, that when 
the main lines do not run tributaries would 
only be too glad to follow the good example. 
The question might also arise, if traffic is sus- 
pended twenty-four hours will not the com- 
pany lose one- seventh of its profits ? In an- 
' swer, we pledge our experience, health and 
strength, that at the end of the year our em- 
ployers will not lose one cent, but on the con- 
trary, will be gainers financially. 

Our reasons are these : At present the 
duties of your locomotive engineers are in- 
cessant, day after day, night succeeding night, 
Sunday and all, rain or shine, with all the 
fearful inclemencies of a vigorous Winter to 
contend with. The great strain of both 
mental and physical faculties constantly em- 
ployed has a tendency in time to impair the 
requisites so necessary to make a good en- 
gineer. Troubled in mind, jaded and worn 
out in body, the engineer cannot give his 
duties the attention they should have in order 
to best advance his employer's interests. We 
venture to say, not on this broad continent, 
in any branch of business or traffic, can be 
found any class in the same position as rail- 
road men. 

They are severed from associa-tions that all 
hold most dear, debarred from the opportunity 
of worship, that tribute man owes to his God ; 
witnessing all those pleasures accorded to 
others, which are the only oases in the deserts 
of this life, and with no prospect of relief. We 
ask you to aid us. Give us the Sabbath for 
rest after our week of laborious duties, 
and we pledge you that, with a system invig- 
orated by a season of repose, by a brain eased 
and cleared by hours of relaxation, we can go 
to work with more energy, more mental and 
physical force, and can and will accomplish 
more work and do it better, if possible, in six 
days than we can now do in seven. We cai> 
give you ten days in six if you require it, if we 
can only look forward to a certain period of 
rest. In conclusion, we hope and trust that, 
in conjunction with other gentlemen of the 
trunk lines leading to the seaboard, you will 
be able to accomplish something that will 
ameliorate our condition." 



43 



motive engineers in Washington one of 
them said that in seven years lie had 
never been free to spend a single 
Sabbath with his family, and that when 
he did get to see them for a few hours 
he was often so weary for lack of regu- 
lar rest that he would fall asleep while 
eating and have to be aroused bj" his 
little daughter to complete his meal. 
It was in such a home that the little 
girl, when her mother had read the 
stoiy of God's seven days in Genesis, 
said, pathetically, ''We shall have to 
get God to make an eighth day so that 
papa can rest and be at home with us.'" 
Instead of asking God to make an 
eighth day let us restore the seventh 
that He "made for man" at the be- 
ginning. 

Who can picture the value of the 
Sabbath in the poor man's home ? God's 
two first gifts to unf alien man were the 
family and the Sabbath, the Jachin and 
Bo£LZ pillars of strength and beauty be- 
fore that Edenic temple of innocence. 
Those pillars have been scarred b^-- the fall 
but are still the chief pillars of Christian 
ci\ilization. They stand or fall together 
and with them civilization itself. Behind 
these pillars,- in the Sabbath at home, 
thousands have found, even in this 
world, their paradise regained. They 
are precious to the rich, for in these 
days the millionaire is held to his toil 
through the six working- days by his 
competitor almost as closely as his em- 
ployees by tlieir master. But 3-et more 
precious is tlie Home Day to the poor. 
Better even than its sweet restfulness, 
better even than its release from rou- 
tine, better even than its opportunities 
for increasing intelligence, is its escape 
from all human mastership. One day 
in every week the poor man has full 
possession of the two chief treasures of 
the richest and the mightiest, independ- 
ence and home fellowship. Never so 
appropriate as at Sabbatli twilight, in 
the home circle is that song of the heart, 
"Home, home, sweet sweet home." 
He who drives or allures men from 
this second Eden to Sunday work oi- 
Sunday dissipation to gratify his greed 



or lust is that old serpent the Devil ot 
his agent. 

The railroad tracks of the United 
States, long enough to girdle the world 
thirteen times — an unlucky thirteen un- 
less Sunday work is stopped — are the 
Laocoon coils of a serpent that is crush- 
ing the father and children together — 
their life, their morals, tlieir happiness 
— in a million homes. 

As Dr. John Hannon, of San Fran- 
cisco, has said: " Every Sabbath morn- 
ing our civilization stands, like Shylock, 
crying for its pound of flesh." 

A railroad conductor recently told me 
that during the previous month he had 
worked thirty-eight daj^s, and that an- 
other conductor on the same line had 
w^orked forty. It must have been the 
latter's boy who said that his father 
worked " fourteen months in the year." 
Accidents, sometimes, reveal the fact 
that railroad men work even more than 
that. The engineer who was found 
guilty of manslaugliter for the Mud Run 
disaster had been seventy-two hours on 
duty with only six hours rest. That was 
working at the rate of nine hundred and 
twelve nine hour days per yeai'- His 
manager ought to have been found 
guilty of murder in the first degree. 
(Applause.) 

Look at a railroad map of the United 
States and you will see that all our 
States are in the meshes of one immense 
spider's web. It is said that the close of 
the nineteenth century will find the en- 
tire ownership of our railroads vested in 
twenty-five railroad kings. If that be 
so, then the opening of the twentieth 
century will find this nation the '^ x)ockei 
borough "of a railroad trust, or it will 
find the railroads owned and controlled 
by the nation. (Applause.) , 

Sucii a law as we ask of Congress 
would be welcomed by not a few of the 

RAILROAD MANAGERS 

themselves, most of whom lack the 
moral courage to stop their Sunday 
trains while such trains are run ,on rival 
roads, though they believe, with the 
engineers, that no more money is made 
by seven day's I'ail road ing" per week than 



44 



would be made by six with employees 
improved in many ways by the Rest 
Day. The "good-will" of a store has 
a cash value, and so has the good- will 
of employees. 

One who uses refrigerator cars vary 
largely, and who believes that they re- 
move all necessity for Sunday freights for 
perishable goods, says that one or even 
two days of delay en route makes no in- 
crease of expense. The new cars for live 
stock make it possible to give even those 
who run stock trains their Rest Day with- 
out cruelty to animals. I am informed 
that the interstate law requires that they 
should be stopped every twenty-eight 
hours in order to prevent them from be- 
coming feverish and so unfit for the 
people's meat. At the time of the first 
hearing on our petition at Washington, 
the Senate was debating, at great length, 
an interstate commerce bill to protect 
the health of cattle in transit — doubtless 
the very bill just referred to. "We sug- 
gested that it would be appropriate to 
give as much time to the consideration 
of our proposed interstate commerce 
bill for protecting the health of more 
than half a million railroad men by giv- 
ing them their weekly Rest Day. That 
the Senate did not do so is but one more 
proof of labor's just charge against 
legislators, that persons are less pro- 
tected than property. 

Do you say, "I believe in stopping 
most of the Sunday trains, but surely 

THE TRANS-CONTINENTAL TRAINS, 

that require seven days to cross the 
country, ought not to be stopped in 
midcontinent any more than a steam- 
boat in mid-ocean." That steamboat 
cannot be thrown at us from mid-ocean 
much longer. When Mr. Moody can 
preach in Queenstown on one Sabbath, 
and in New York City the next, and 
when six day trips are getting too com- 
mon to publish, we are very near a time 
when an awakened Christian and hu- 
mane sentiment may insist on adding 
some, at least, of the steamboat men to 
the list of those who may have a share 



in the weekly Rest Day. As to the trans- 
continental train, it has once crossed 
our continent in three days and a half, 
carrying a theatrical troupe from New 
York to San Francisco, and if the Ameri- 
can people desire to emanci^Date the 
overstrained railroad men from their 
Sunday slavery, the few business men 
who are in such a hurry to reach the in- 
sane asylumn as to cross our great con- 
tinent in one unbroken trip, will be able 
to do it by starting on Monday or Tues- 
day or Wednesday. (Applause). 

Surely the law we seek is in accord 
both with man's constitution and with 
the United States' Constitution. The 
cry that this humane law would be 

A PRACTICAL UNION OF CHURCH AND 
STATE 

encounters its most serious difficulty in 
the fact that it has been indorsed, not 
by churches only, but the highest assem- 
blies of labor. When it is asserted that 
this movement to secure a law of Con- 
gress against Sundaj^ work is really an 
effort of ecclesiastics to unite church and 
state, I am accustomed to hold up some 
of the petitions that have been smutted 
by the hands of the toilers as they have 
signed them while at their work, as you 
see in this one from the car shops at Rich- 
mond. In old England the barons as you 
remember, thought it beneath them to do 
even such mental work as is required in 
education, and so had servants do both 
their reading and writing. When a ser- 
vant had written a deed, the baron, in 
place of signing his name, dipped the in- 
side of his hand in a plate of smut, and 
stamped its picture on the document — 
the lines of every man's hand being as 
different from every other's, as his hand- 
writing- would have been — and then, 
turning his hand, he stamped his seal 
ring into the hot wax So originated 
the term, "Witness my hand and seal." 
So to those who call the effort to secure 
a Rest Day for the toilers, a church and a 
state movement. Labor replies, uplifting 
the smutted petition, " This is genuine 
labor reform — this six day law — wit- 
ness my hand and seal." (Applause.) 



SABBATH JOYS AND SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS. 



Talmud: "Rabbi Chanina wrapped 
himseir in his festal cloak and when the 
Sabbath eve was on the turning point he 
said : ' Let us go out to meet the Sab- 
bath— -the Queen.' " 

Epistle of Barnabas : " We keep the 
eighth day with joj'fulness, the day also 
on which Jesus rose again from the 
dead." 

Rev. R. S. Mac Arthur, D. D.: "A 
week without Sunday' is like a country 
without the smell of flowers or the song 
of birds. It is like a j^ear without a 
Summer — nothing but bleak, barren, 
frozen Winter." 

Toledo Commercial: "In proportion 
as loose ideas in regard to the Sabbath 
grow, the number of persons required to 
work on that (Xny increases." 

New York Journal of Commerce 
(Junes, 1SS9): "It is not bigotry nor 
fanaticism to insist that one day in seven 
shall be set apart for peace from busi- 
ness cares and secular pursuits. In our 
judgment no people will prosper who 
disobey this law which is written in the 
very constitution of the material uni- 
verse, as well as in tlie revelation which 
is sacred to so many hearts. This de- 
mand to do away with the sentiment 
that prevents tlie turning of the first 
day of the week into a grand holiday is 
not in the interest of the poor laborer. 
The moment tliis restriction is wholly 
abolished, Sunday will become a work- 
ing day and not a day of rest for the 
poor." 

Dr. Eugene Bersier, Gospel in Paris, 
p. Ill: "We are often surprised when 
we compare the physical degeneracy of 
the workmen in tlie French centers of 
industry with the vigour of the English 
operatives. Do you not tliink that the 
observance of the Lord's Day may be one 
of the causes of this difference?" 

T. DeWitt Talmage: The Champs 
Khfsees one great mass, one great mob 
of pleasure seekers; balloons flying. 



parrots chattering-, footballs rolling, 
Punch and Judy shows in scores of 
places, each with a shouting audience ; 
hand organs and cymbals and all styles 
of racket, musical and unmusical. ' And 
then as the day passed on toward night, 
I stood and saw the excursionists come 
home, fagged out men, women and 
children, a great Gulf Stream of fatigue 
and irritability and wretchedness. A 
drunken Fourth of July instead of a 
Christian Sunday. If you have ever 
been in Brussels or in Paris on the Sab- 
bath day, it requires no great persuasion 
on my part to get you to pray morning, 
noon and night that such a Sabbath may 
never come to this country." 

Professor LuTHARDT, Leipsic: "Eng- 
land and America are richer than Ger- 
many because they keep the Sabbath 
better." — Quoted by Prof. Wilcox in 
Advance, June 2, 1SS9. 

The Nation : " The footing of Sunday 
as a day of rest is almost as precarious 
in Germany as its footing as a day of 
religious observances.'" 

Rev. Josiah Strong, D.D., author of 
" Our Country," in sermon on "The 
Civil Sabbath": " The Continental Sab- 
bath can hardly be called a day of rest. 
The time not devoted to business is, by 
the multitude, given up to amusements. 
But many amusements can no more 
take the place of the Sabbath rest than 
of night rest. Reaction may be afforded 
by a change of activities, but the in- 
tense living, the headlong rusli of this 
generation, stands in peculiar need of 
repose, the rest which comes only from 
quiet. As a matter of fact, a holiday 
Sabbath is commonly followed by a 
jaded Monday. Among the lower class of 
operatives in France, Germany and even 
in England, the effects of Sabbath dis- 
sipation very commonly make Monday 
an idle day. European manufacturers 
say that American workmen earn more 
than European by being able to do work 



46 



Mondays. Among us, wherever the 
Continental Sabbath has prevailed, 
Monday is the poorest workday in the 
week, showing that Sunday amusements 
have served to exhaust rather than re- 
cuperate." 

Professor Herrick Johnson, D.D., 

"The American Sabbath is a civil 
institution, recognized and embedded 
in our law as a conservator of public 
morals and as conducive to public 
order. No civil process is valid that 
is served on Sunday, except in extreme 
cases. In many such ways the Sabbath 
is in our law as a civil institution, re- 
cognized, provided for, and perpetuated. 
The need of this day of rest is laid of 
God in the constitution of the body, 
and, therefore, the Sabbath is the most 
effectual shield thrown around the 
laborer, protecting his liberty, his 
health, his home, and guarding alike 
against the tyranny of capital and the 
license of anarchy. One of the most 
anomalous things in connection with 
this whole discussion is that laboring 
men should ever be found opposed to 
this Sunday movement. Let the exact 
nature of this question once be thor- 
oughly understood, and honest, self- 
respecting labor will rise as a wall of 
adamant against the encroachments 
of capitalistic greed upon the Sabbath. 

The claim of the Sabbath as a day of 
religious culture and worship is laid 
only on the individual conscience, and is 
not to be enforced by legal statute. It 
is no part of this Sabbath movement to 
make people good by law. We do not 
propose to force religion down people's 
throats. God alone is Lord of the con- 
science, and has left it free from the doc- 
trines and commandments of men. 

While we do not seek by law to 
enforce the religious observance of 
the Sabbath, yet ' every individual 
has the right to the enjoyment of 
the Christian Sabbath without liability 
to annoyance from the ordinary 
secular pursuits of life, except so far as 
they may be dictated by necessity or 
charity.' Supreme Court, 40 111. R., 146." 



Rev. H. D. Ganse, D. D. "There is 
a broad ground on which all fair-minded 
men and good citizens ought to stand to- 
g'ether in maintaining by law a weekly 
day of rest from labor, for religious 
opportunity, and of safety from the 
gamblmg-hell and the saloon. Where 
the laws of a community are already 
planted on that ground, and the 
magistrates do not enforce them, those 
magistrates are offenders jagainst com- 
mon morality,. They are making no 
issue with religious fanaticism. Fanati- 
cism has nothing to do with this question 
of human nature's right to a weekly day 
of safe rest. The denial of that right, 
in whatever phrases of liberty it may 
dress itself, has one main inspiration — 
the gain which some men can make by 
breaking down the Sunday that defends 
other men." 

Justice Field, U. S. Supreme Court: 
" Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of 
rest are upheld, not from any right of 
the Government to legislate for the 
promotion of religious observances, but 
from its right to protect all persons from 
the physical and moral debasement 
w^hich comes from uninterrupted labor. 
Such laws have always been deemed 
beneficent and merciful laws, especiall}^ 
to the poor and dependent, to the la- 
borers in our factories and workshops, 
and in the heated rooms of our cities ; 
and their vahdity has been sustained by 
the highest courts of the States." 

Henry George : " I believe that the 
institution of the Sabbath is one of the 
greatest benefits that the human race 
ever had. I believe in the strict en- 
forcement of the law that prevents ser- 
vile labor being carried on on the seventh 
day." 

Grahame : 

"Hail, Sabbath ! thee I hail, the poor man's day r 
On other days the man of toil is doomed 
To eat his joyless bread lonely; the ground 
Both seat and board; screened from the Winter's ' 

cold 
Or Summer's heat, by neighboring hedge or tree; 
But on this day, embosomed in his home, 
He shares the frugal meal with those he loves." 



FAIR PLAY AND SUNDAY PLAYS, 



An Address by Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, 

ON November 24th, 1889, in Mac- 
auley's Theatre, Louisville. 

The American Sabbath is feehng the 
benefical effects of the revival of Amer- 
icanism. But the motto, "America for 
Americans," to my mind is un-American 
as well as un-Christian, unless you mean 
by it "Americans in sph'it, born under 
whatever sky." Of these we cannot hav^e 
too many. Some of you have heard of 
the Irish wife who said: " Moike was 
naturalized lasht wake, but it didn't 
take. He spakes wid as strong- an 
Oirish accint as iver." We have no room 
for Irishmen who will not be Amei^ican- 
ized — to use a better word than natural- 
ized — but plenty of room for real Irish- 
Americans, whose ideals and loyalty 
have no foreign "accint." "America^ 
for Americans," strictly interpreted, 
would send us all back to Europe, Asia 
or Africa, except the Indians. 

A man in New York went before a 
j udge for naturalization. He was asked, 
' ' What is your nationality ?" He replied, 
" I don't know. Judge, I wish you would 
tell me. My father was an English- 
man, m^' mother a Spaniard, and I was 
born on a French ship flying the Dutch 
flag. I want to make the rest of the 
voyage of life under the Stars and 
Stripes." Such a man is "Brother 
Jonathan," a conglomerate British- 
Spanish-French-Dutchraan, voyaging 
under the Stars and Stripes. Since this 
composite blood flows in all our veins, 
let us revise our watchword, and say, 
"America for American institutions.'''' 
Nothing mo4-e fitly embodies this watch- 
word tlian the defense of the American 
Sabbath, to whose rest of body and 
mind, to whose diffusion of knowledge 
and of conscientiousness, to whose 
mingling in the churches every Sab- 
bath of ricli and poor as equal sons of 
God, we owe, more than to almost any- 
thing else, the fact that we are not, 
hke France of the holiday Sunday, a 
republic "good for tliis day only," lying 
uneasily in the crater of a not extinct 
volcano. 

This brings us face to face with the 



question of Sunday amusements. Who 
can doubt tiiat the difterence between 
the " Frenchy " Sunday and the Ameri- 
can Sabbath has a causative relation to 
the corresponding difference between 
the transient French Republic and "the 
rock-firm American Republic. The 
character of persons and of peoples is 
determined more by their use of leisure 
than by business hours. Tell me which 
way a man goes for his evenings and 
his Sabbaths, and I will tell you which 
way his life is going. Any people who 
spend their Sabbaths partly in toil and 
the remainder in dissipation or childish 
play can never develop enough man- 
hood to safely govern themselves. Sun- 
day amusements therefore have an im- 
portant bearing upon civil as well as 
religious affairs. It is this civil aspect 
which I propose to consider. " Bread 
and games " was the dying cry of the 
Roman Republic. "Sunday beer and 
games" our sovereign people will not 
grant, to their own political destruc- 
tion. 

Let us approach this question by the 
firm steps of four generally admitted 
propositions. 

First : There is in the civilized world 
almost universal acceptance of the 
proposition that a iveekly Rest Day is 
a natural need, and so a natural right 
of man. " By the following simple but 
graphic diagram, Dr. Haegier exhibits 
the expenditure and partial recovery of 
the forces in the ordinary daily labor 
and nightly rest, and the need and 
effect of the supplementary rest of Sun- 
day, to maintain them at the level of 
highest efficiency." 




47 



48 



" Beginning- on Monday morning, 
€ach downward stroke to E (evening), 
marks the daily expenditure of energy, 
and the upward stroke the nightly re- 
covery, which does not rise quite to the 
height of the previous morning ; so 
that there is a gradual decline during 
the week, which only the prolonged 
rest of Sunday repairs. The downward 
line shows the continuous decline of the 
forces when they are not renewed by the 
weekly rest." 

Humboldt the Great, who was so far 
from being a religious fanatic that his 
followers debate whether he ever said 
anything favorable to Christianity, de- 
fended the weekly Rest Day as a natural 
law, scientifically proven. He called 
attention to the mad experiment of 
France wifch a ten-day week. It was 
soon found that one day of rest to nine 
of work was too little. Many persons, 
therefore, added, as a voluntary rest 
day, the abandoned Sunday, making 
two rest days in each of their ten-day 
weeks, but one day of rest to four of work 
w^as found to be too much, and so the 
nation that had jumped the track of 
God's laws, after dashing about peril- 
ously for a dozen years on the ties, re- 
turned to the track of the seven-day 
week. Judge Field reminds us that 
there are very few points on which so 
many statesmen, scientists and philoso- 
phers are agreed as on the necessity and 
value of the weekly Rest Day. 

Second: There is the same general 
agreement that this weekly Rest Day 
must be the same day for all. It will 
not do to have the bricklayers rest Mon- 
day, and the hod carriers Tuesday ; the 
bankers Wednesday, and the merchants 
Thursdaj^ ; the judges Friday, and the 
lawyers Saturday. In business life men 
are coupled like the cars of a train — they 
must all be "on the go," or all stop 
together. Besides, rest requires fellow- 
ship. Friends must rest in company or 
they might as well not rest at all. 

Third: The agreement is nearly as 
universal that this common Rest Day 
must be protected by law. When a peo- 
ple conclude that employees ought not 
to be kept at work more than ten hours 



a day they make a "ten-hour law" to 
restrain unjust masters in the interest ot 
their employees and their competitors 
alike. So when a community is per- 
suaded that men ought not to work more 
than six days per week (except in cases 
of necessity) they need to put their con- 
viction into a six-day law, that is, a 
Sabbath law, to restrain those who 
would not otherwise be just to their 
competitors and their employees. 

Fourth: There is general agreement 
also that in prohibiting Sunday work, 
the State should make three exceptions, 
namely, (1) for works of necessity, (2) 
for works of mercj^ (3) for private work 
by those who observe another day of the 
week. 

Works of real "necessity," in the very 
. nature of the case must be permitted on 
every day. The difficulty is that the 
word "necessity" is racked by legisla- 
tures, courts and police until it is man- 
gled beyond recognition. The contra- 
dictory decisions in Massachusetts 
courts, one declaring that shaving on 
Sunday at a barber shop is, and another 
that it is not "a work of necessity," 
suggest that "justice," so far from be- 
ing " blind," is cross-eyed and looks two 
ways at once. There are many other 
illustrations of this which suggest that 
the definition and enumeration of 
" works of necessity " should be done, as 
far as possible, by legislatures, not left 
to police courts. 

Works of mercy are the very best rest 
from work for money, because so com- 
plete a change of thought. 

In most of our States a further excep- 
tion is made for those who regularly 
and religiously observe the Saturday 
. Sabbath. They are allowed to do such 
private work on our Sabbath as will not 
destroy the general rest. Too little at- 
tention is given by legislators, judges 
and police to the adjustment of the 
rights of the minority to those of the 
majority in this matter. No State can 
justly allow those who keep Saturday 
to open shops for traffic oh the general 
Rest Day, unless it be in some excep- 
tional colony where all who buy, as 
well as all who sell, are Saturday- 



49 



keepers. Those whose convictions for- 
bid them to sell on Saturday should 
choose some other mode of livelihood 
than shop-keeping, unless, they can do 
their week's work, like school teachers, 
in five days. 

WHY SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS ARE FORBID- 
DEN BY CIVIL LAW. 

By the foregoing- steps we have climbed 
together to the portals of the Sabbath 
question, namely: Cannot another ex- 
ception he added for Sunday amuse- 
ments ? As ministers, sextons, singers, 
doctors, druggists, nurses, servants, are 
-allowed or required to follow their usual 
avocations on the Rest Day, and must 
get their weekly rest Avholly or in part 
on some other day, or parts of other 
days, may not the civil law, apart from 
religious considerations, allow theatres 
and railroads to work their employees 
on all or a part of the Rest Day in fur- 
nisliing public amusement, provided 
they are given some other day for rest? 
This is the Sabbath question, the most 
critical, the most vital part of the whole 
subject. 

Nearly all our States, in the latest re- 
visions of their laws, have answered 
this question in the negative. Why? 
Not because Sunday amusements are 
regarded by Christians as sinful. Our 
legislatures, in recent j^ears, have not 
been open to the complaint of being so 
over-pious that they lean the other way. 
If Sunday amusements were not crimes 
against man, as well as sins against 
God, they would not be forbidden by the 
legislatures of to-day. 

To those who say that the opposition 
to Sunday amusements is not at all due 
to a humane interest in preserving the 
Rest Day, but is only an attempt of the 
preacher to corral a congregation by 
shutting up everything but the church, 
the answer is that the church certainly 
does many things out of Christlike Jui- 
manity, with no reference to filling its 
pews or its purse — notably in building 
and maintaining hospitals for incur- 
ables, and many more things through 
unselfish iiitcrf.'st in public morality. 

The State forbid.s Sunday amusements 



partly because they deprive thousands 
of men of their share in the weekly Rest 
Day, w^ithout any such valid plea as that 
of mercy or necessity. Actors, for in- 
stance, have often protested against their 
Sunday work. There is, in the case of 
many of these amusements, street par- 
ades, for instance, the added reason that 
they rob the community of its right to a 
quiet day — so much needed in this age 
of extinct leisure, when the week days 
are so largely spent in vexatious hello- 
ing to the telephone and anxious running 
after trains, by which our nervous ac- 
count is heavily overdrawn. The chief 
reason, however, why civil law forbids 
Sunday amusements, is not the injury 
that comes to individuals from Sunday 
work and noise, but the fact that to allow 
them w^ould be to destroy the Rest Day 
itself and so the body politic also. 

This would occur, and does occur in 
this way. If the amusement vender is 
allowed to sell his minstrelsy, his tra- 
gedy, his comedy, his excursion tickets 
on the Rest Day, the merchants who 
have better things to sell demand an 
equally early chance at the Saturday 
night's wages, and so toil and traffic of 
all kinds crowd into the Rest Day. When 
the State allows a poor man, because he 
has no refrigerator, to buy his cigars on 
Sunday morning, it must not forbid the 
clothier to supply his customers also on 
Sunday morning with coats "hot from 
the griddle." 

There is a relation, you perceive, be- 
tween fair play and Sunday play. You 
cannot have both in your Rest Day. 

When Mr. Heath, of Brooklyn, intro- 
duced in the New York Legislature an 
amendment to the Sabbath Law, forbid- 
ding Sunday sales of candy and tobacco, 
it was laughed down as a "baby bill." 
But tobacco and candy in this case stood 
for equity and honesty, which are not 
babies. Why should these two kinds of 
merchants have a monopoly of the rob- 
bery of Sabbath schools and the manu- 
facture of embezzlers? 

Men talk about compromise efforts to 
stop common labor and ordinaiy traffic 
on Sunday, while tolerating amusement 
venders, as " practical Sabbath reform." 



50 



Nothing is so impracticable as injustice. 
The reason why many Sabbath laws 
are not enforced is that both officers and 
people feel that some of the things they 
permit have no better right in the Eest 
Day than those they forbid. The man 
who sells useless or harmful things may 
use the Sabbath for traffic, but those 
who return customers something of 
value for their money must close up and 
take the leavings of the Saturday night's 
wages. Such a statute is not law but 
lawlessness. 

The only "practicable" law for pro- 
tecting the Rest Day is one that impar- 
tially forbids all work for gain, except 
what public conscience and common 
sense recognize as clearly works of ne- 
cessity and mercy. 

The reasons for prohibiting Sunday 
amusements will appear more clearly as 
we apply them to concrete cases. 

THE SUNDAY OPENING OF MUSEUMS 

is coming up anew in connection with 
the World's Fair of 1893, whose policy 
on this matter will probably be decided 
long in advance. Already saloon organs 
insist that it must have Sunday openings 
or they will " not support it." The 
workingmen of England have treated 
this question with rare wisdom. Their 
opposition to Sunday opening was voiced 
by a two-thirds vote of the House of 
Commons the last time the issue was 
raised. A much larger percentage than 
that of the workingmen — namely^ nine- 
tenths, 501,705 to 45,782— have petitioned 
against this so-called boon which idle 
cockneys seek to thrust upon them, 
not for religious reasons chiefly, but be- 
cause these workingmen, with one day 
in the week to think, see that if they re- 
quire or permit men to work on the Rest 
Day in museums that they may be 
amused, they cannot justly oppose the 
opening of theatres to gratify others who 
want more pepper in their amusement 
— something more exciting than a stuffed 
monkey and a cold statue. And those 
workingmen see, further, that if the 
theatre can use the Rest Day for money 
making, the factory cannot be equitably 
refused the same opportunity. This is 



not mere prophecy on their part. These 
workingmen have seen the wedge, whose 
thin edge is the Sunday opening of the 
museum and. the Sunday concert, driven 
home on the Continent. How slowly 
news crosses the Atlantic ! In Prussia, 
57 per cent, of the establishments en- 
gaged in manufacture, and 77 per cent, 
of those engaged in trade and trans- 
portation continue their business on the 
so-called "holiday Sunday "—keeping 
over two-fifths of all the wage earners of 
that country at their toil on the average 
Sunday. Those who require others tO' 
work the mails, and trains, and saloons, 
and printing presses, that they may be-, 
amused, will find that their own turn to- 
work comes ere long. So says conti- 
nental Europe. So says the "Wild 
West." 

The only safe principle for either the 
individual or the State to adopt with re- 
gard to the Rest Day is : Every one must 
get his rest in a way that will not destroy 
the rest of others. Let the motto be : 
Rest and let rest on the Rest Day. Quiet 
walks, chats with books and people, home 
fellowships— these most restful forms of 
quiet recreation, furnishing the needed 
contrast to the excitements both of week- 
day business and weekday pleasures,, 
have in them none of "man's inhuman- 
ity to man," as do those Sunday amuse- 
ments that are provided by robbing those 
who furnish them of their right to rest 
and their rights of conscience. 

SUNDAY CONCERTS 

are, in three respects, more objection- 
able than Sunday museums ; first, in 
that they are so often associated with 
drinking ; second, in that they are usu- 
ally violations of law ; third, in that 
they add hypocrisy to criminality by pre- 
tending to be " sacred." Experience 
shows the wisdom and necessity of for- 
bidding any Sunday entertainment that 
charges an admittance fee, howeve^ 
" sacred" it may pretend to be. 

BUT WHY FORBID SUNDAY BASE BALL? 

Even if it did not infringe upon the 
right of those living in the neighbor- 
hood to a quiet day ; if it did not open 



51 



saloons and promote gambling ; if it 
did not tm'n loose into subm-ban com- 
munities herds of hoodlums that terror- 
ize the streets like Texas cattle ; if it 
did not lead boys to disobedience and 
truancy and immorality ; if it were as 
quiet as the most respectable theatre, it 
would be necessary to forbid it because 
its players are also paid actors, engaged 
in the business of selling amusement, 
and cannot equitably be permitted to 
use the day unless all others who believe 
the Sabbath was made for — money, are 
given an equal chance to fill their pock- 
ets at the cost of the general rest. 
There are amateur ball clubs as there 
are amateur theatricals, but the law can- 
not enter into these particulars. It 
must open the door to all public amuse- 
ments or close the door to all. It can- 
not allow Sunday base ball and forbid 
horse racing except by a legislative 
crime against equity. Even if the rea- 
sons that lie back of the laws against 
Sunday base ball were not so clear, it 
ought to be enough to keep ever good 
citizen from these games that they are 
usually crimes, as there are few States 
in which Sunday base ball is not forbid- 
den by law. 

AS TO SUNDAY EXCURSIONS, 

whatever arguments may be offered 
for them, surely it ought to be argument 
enough against them for any law abiding 
citizen that they too are violations of law. 
If the laws are unwise, ■ let them be 
repealed, but meantime it is anarchy to 
advocate the breaking of laws that we 
disapprove. 

But is there ground to urge the repeal 
of whatever laws interfere with the 
Sunday excursion ? Do such laws pro- 
mote or prevent rest and health and 
good order ? Let us see. The talk about 
" worshiping God in nature'' is the veri- 
est hypocrisy. Better far, "square 
shouldered sinning" than such sneak- 
ing. 

Observe that no one defends Sunday 
excui-sions for the people who reside in 
the country or in small towr.s and cities 
—for instance, Richmond, Va., from any 
pai-t of wiiicli itiias been found that a 



person can in fifteen minutes' walk into 
the country. No one defends these ex- 
cursions for the well to do people in 
large cities, who can often go into the 
country on week days ; nor for those 
living' near the parks, that bring the 
country into the city. The only people 
for whom the argument is seriously 
pressed is "the miserably poor in the 
slums of great cities." But why are 
they in the slums? There is "honest 
poverty," but there is not enough hon- 
est pauperism to count. The slums 
are as much of an affliction to their oc- 
cupants, in most cases, as a pig pen is 
to a pig. Otherwise why do men pay 
as much for a single dirty room in lower 
New York as it would cost to Iiire a tidy 
tenement of three rooms near the Park; 
as much as it would cost to hire a little 
farm a few hours away in Connecticut? 
Reformers are continually embarrassed 
in their city work, because when a 
man in the slums becomes reformed 
and begins to earn a living he moves 
up toivn. The question is, whether it is 
better to send the slums out of the city 
one day per week, rags, rum and all, to 
make a slum of every quiet village in 
the suburbs, or whether we shall help 
men out of the slums altogether ? This 
would be accomplished far more fre- 
quently than it is, if the many editors 
and the few preachers, and the Chris- 
tians, not a few, who multiply the diffi- 
culties of the reformers hf defending- 
the Sunday excursion, which is their 
chief obstacle, would devote the same 
energy to cultivating in the masses a 
feeling of loyalty to law. This energy 
also might be used to better purpose in 
multiplying city parks, such as New 
York has voted to put as breathing- 
places all througli its slums, and in se- 
curing the Saturday half holiday, which 
cuts down work in the best Sabbath 
keeping States in the excursion season 
to five days and a half per week, while 
the States that neglect the Sabbath 
keep many of their wage earners at 
work for the whole seven days. 

The argument that men might drink 
a little less on a Sunday excursion 
than in tlie Sunday saloons, that one 



53 



way of sinning is better than another, 
can be used to defend all crimes except 
the worst. If a Sunday excursion is 
better than a Sunday saloon, the saloon 
itself is better than the brothel. Of 
>.hree evils, choose none and defend 
aone. 

" It is not often that Christian people 
welcome on a Sabbath day a cloudy sky 
and threatening rain. Yet, while regret- 
ting the influence of such a sky on the 
attendance upon the services of Chris- 
tian ch arches, the decent people of 
suburban towns cannot refrain from say- 
ing to themselves and sometimes aloud 
to their families : ' Now we shall have a 
quiet, restful day. For the clouds and 
chilling winds prevent the incursions 
of the Sabbath breakers of the cities.' 
The townsmen are not compelled to 
guard their flower and vegetable gar- 
dens, their fruit trees and blooming 
shrubs from fierce thieves who answer 
w^ords of warning with showers of 
stones." 

It is too much forgotten that the poor 
cannot generally afford to go away on 
excursions every Sabbath. Those who 
contribute to the " Fresh Air Fund " for 
free excursions, it is noticeable, show 
out of what daj^ they learned benevo- 
lence by not sending out their benefi- 
ciaries on the Sabbath. Women and 
children are usually as free to go on 
weekdays as on the Sabbath, and as to 
fathers, the whole holidays, and half 
holidays, and the days between jobs, and 
the days they are on strikes, afford most 
of them as many opportunities to take 
their families into the country as they 
can afford to use. How shallow the ex- 
cuse, " The people have no other day to 
go ! " New York State made Saturday 
afternoon a legal holiday and in the ex- 
cursion months it was very generally 
observed by the closing of business. The 
released toilers then had " another day 
to go," a *' day for humanity," besides 
the " day for religion." But instead of 
humanely refraining from Sunday trains 
in the interest of the railroad men, as 
many went on Sunday excursions as be- 
fore. Not one Sunday train was taken 
off, nor was a new church added be- 



cause the excuse for Sunday work and 
pleasuring' was removed. 

There does not remain to the lawless 
Sunday excursion even the defense that , 
it is restful. I sent out, some years since, 
to merchants and manufacturers this 
question: "In your observation of clerks, 
mechanics and other employees, which 
class are in the best phsyical and men- 
tal condition for the renewal of business 
on Monday mornings, those who are 
church goers, or those who spend the 
Sabbath in picnics and other pleasures ? " 
Every man of affairs knows what the 
answer must have been — a chorus of 
testimonies that those who had spent 
the Sabbath in "pleasure exertions''^ 
were not on hand at all on Monday 
mornings, but used the " blue Monday," 
and sometim es a tired Tuesday also, to 
get over the exhaustion of their Sunday 
excitements and dissipations, while 
those who had spent the Sabbath quietly 
were on hand in normal vigor to begin 
the week's work on time. 

As a matter of fact, whatever may be 
said of " Sunday excursions per se," the 
real Sunday excursion is bad and tends 
to worse and worst. Refinement as well 
as religion taboos them. In California, 
where they have grown to ripeness and 
beyond, even the Sunday newspapers 
join in the general protest that has com- 
pelled some railroads to suspend them as 
nuisances. Think of a hoodlum picnic 
from San Francisco, after having terror- 
ized a beautiful sut arh all day, return- 
ing on Sunday night on a train, with 
the lights twined out ! That, as one has 
said, is "the respectable Sunday excur- 
sion gone to seed." 

If there were in these excursions 
neither weariness nor dissipation for the 
passengers, it would be sufficient objec- 
tion that this pleasure travel breaks up 
the Home day for millions in the families 
of railroad men. 

Do you answer that the engineer may 
have his Rest Day on Monday ? Well , 
let us see what you are giving him. 
His wife is busy with her washing. It 
is her "busy day" — a day when it is 
good for a woman to be alone. His 
young children are alT school, and his 



53 



grown sons and daughters in the factory, 
and his fellow-engineers on their en- 
gines. Such solitude is worse than work 
itself. What is it for which you give 
him this as a substitute — a general Rest 
Day, wiien his wife, and children and 
friends can give him that chief element 
of rest — congenial fellowship ? Monday, 
Tuesday and Wednesday together Avould 
not be an equivalent for the God-given 
Day of which you have robbed both his 
heart and conscience. Even when your 
employer has refused to give you either 
the Saturda}^ half holiday" or early clos- 
ing, you are not justified in making re- 
prisals on fellow toilers by destroying 
their rest for mere pleasure. 

In a certain walled city the profes- 
sional men, the mechanics, the mer- 
chants, the hucksters, the carriers and 
the amusement venders were divided 
by their occupations into six guilds, 
each residing in a different district, 
with a separate gate. There came 
a giant against the cit}^ and with his 
battering ram broke dow^n, one after the 
other, the six gates that protected these 
six guilds and all the^^ held dear, and let 
in his hungry horde of followers upon 
them. "Which things are an allegory." 
The city wall is the Sabbath, which pro- 
tects these six groups in that which is 
almost the dearest treasure they possess, 
their weekly rest. The giant that 
breaks down aU these gates is the Sun- 
day newspaper. He breaks down the 
gate that protects the Sabbath rest of 
the professional man In' requiring Sun- 
day work of tlie editor ; he breaks down 
the gate tliat protects the Sabbath rest 
of mechanics by requiring Sunday work 
of the printer ; he breaks down the gate 
that protects the tSabbath rest of tiie 
merchant by recpiiring Sunday work of 
the newsdealer ; he breaks down the 
gate that protects the Sabbath rest of 
the hucksters, by requiring Sunday work 
of the newsboy ; he breaks down the 
gate that protects tl)e Sabbath rcwst of 
the carrier by requiring Sunday work o-f 
the men in the mail service and on the 
trains. He breaks down the gate that 
protects the Saljbatli rest of tlie amuse- 
ment venders by sen(Hng out the Sunday 



newspapers on the plea of amusement, 
thus opening the way for dime museums 
and theatres to claim the same right. 
There is not a single form of labor or 
business, nor a single form of public 
amusement, which a man can consist- 
ently condemn who either publishes or 
patronizes Sunday newspapers. 

In this allegory is the conclusive 
answer to the shallow excuse that " the 
Monday paper requires most of the 
Sunday work." There need not be any 
Sunday work done on a Monday paper, 
and in some cases there is none. There 
are twenty-four hours outside of the 
Sabbath in which to make it up if no 
Sunday paper is issued. It is as if I gave 
a tailor a day's work to do for me be- 
tween Saturday morning and Monday 
morning. If he uses the Sabbath in- 
stead of Saturday it is his fault, but if I 
require that same amount of work daily 
seven days in tiie week it is partly 
mine. As a matter of fact, the editorial 
staff and the printer do usually perform 
more or less of Sunday work on the 
Monday paper, but this tvork of making 
up a paper, done by a few 

is as nothing 
to the ivork of the hundred times as many 
ivho distribute a metropolitan paper 
after it is made up — the newsdealers, 
neivsboys, x>ost office employees, exj^ress- 
men and railroad men ivho handle the 
paper all day long. These have no Sun- 
day work to do on " the Monday paper." 
The number of persons who do Sunday 
work in distributing" a Sunday paper is, in 
some cases, a thousand times as great as 
the number that do Sunday work in 
making up its Monday edition. 

The Sunday newspaper, then, from 
the standpoint of the civil Sabbath, is 
chiefly objectionable in that it involves 
and sanctions almost every form of 
Sabbath work, manufacture, trade and 
transportation. Mr. A. H. Seigfreid, of 
the Chicago News, an experienced jour- 
nalist, says in view of this fact, " The 
Simday newspaper has done more than 
any and all things else for Sunday 
secularization." 

Dr. Herrick Johnson has character- 
ized the Sunday paper as like the sheet 



54 



of Peter's vision in that it is "a great 
sheet, full of beasts and creeping things 
and fowls " — especially fowls ; but unlike 
Peter's in that it is not "let down 
from Heaven" and in that God never 
"cleansed" it. But this description 
would apply also to many weekday 
issues of the daily press, and w^ould not 
apply altogether to some of the Sundaj^ 
papers. Dr. Janeway, of New York, 
speaking of the adulterations of liquor, 
said to me, " The worst thing that is 
ever put in liquors is the alcohol." The 
worst thing about a Sunday newspaper 
s that it is a Sunday newspaper, that 
sends its compositors to bed, and its 
distributoi s to work, and its readers into 
weekday ruts of thought, when they all 
should be left free for rest and fellow- 
ship and culture of conscience. The 
State that tolerates the Sunday work 
and Sunday amusement involved in a 
Sunday newspaper cannot consistently 
forbid any other form of Sunday work 
or Sunday amusement. 

Let those who think to take the curse 
out of their Sunday paper by either not 
buying it or not reading it until Monday, 
reflect that a day's delay does not lessen 
the g'uilt of receiving stolen goods. 

To all its previous load of sins against 
divine laws, and crimes against civil 
laws, the Sunday newspaper is now 
adding a conspiracy against conscien- 
tiousness. 

Its publishers have been wont to shift 
the blame for their Sunday issue by say- 
ing, " The public demand it." If that 
were so, the public would hardly need 
to be awakened an hour earlier than on 
other days, and in streets never visited 
by newsboys on other days, by the loud 
"demand" of the paper for customers. 
Not content with this, the papers are 
advertising for half the week, in half- 
page advertisements, the attractions re- 
served with devilish cunning, for the 
Sunday edition. They tell the boys and 
girls of households that admit only 
weekday editions, in those editions, of 
the great rewards they offer to those 
who will sacrifice conscientiousness and 
buy the Sunday edition. They tempt 
preachers to violate conscience by re- 



fusing, in many cases, to insert pulpit 
notices except on the Sabbath. They 
tempt the business man to violate his 
conscientious convictions in that they 
refuse those who take only weekday 
papers the news of Saturday and, in 
many cases, charge those as much who 
take only the other papers of the week 
as those who take the Sunday issue also. 
Worst of all, in some cases, in the West, 
they insist on delivering the paper on 
Sunday to those who request that only 
weekday issues shall be delivered to 
them, refusing to allow any subscriber 
any rights of conscience in this matter. 

Whether the opposers of Sunday news- 
papers are right or wrong in their views, 
conscientiousness is too voluable to soci- 
ety to be thus crushed out. 

Intelligence and conscientiousness are 
necessities of life to republics. Neither 
of these two necessities of life can be 
preserved except by preserving the Sab- 
bath. Any conspiracy to destroy con- 
scieniousness is a conspiracy against 
the Republic. Not only our politics, 
but our commerce also, must have con- 
scientiousnes. Neither Australian bal- 
lots not bell punches can take the place 
of it. We cannot get along with ma- 
chine-made honesty alone, either in the 
State or the street. 

The Sunday paper which the New 
York Herald inflicted on London this 
year and which was resisted chiefly as 
an entering wedge for Sunday labor, 
reported a sermon as on the text, "Pilot, 
what is truth?" The truth is that a 
Sunday paper is never a good pilot. The 
man who keeps his mind unchangeably 
on gossip and politics seven days per 
week is almost sure to be wrecked phys- 
ically, mentally and morally. 

You say, "But it has come to stay." 
This profound argument, so often quoted 
as if it were a decision of the Supreme 
Court, has become so familiar that we 
must needs dramatise it. 

WHAT IF IT HAS COME TO STAY? 

Enter Fanatic followed by the tribe of 
Rahab, who cry to him, ' ' Why do you 
try to destroy our vice ? Don't you see 
we have come to stay? Our tribe is 



55 



older than Joshua. The practical thing 
for you to do is to tone down our lan- 
guage a little, if you can, — to receive us, 
in any case, into your homes among 
your sons and daughters, for we have 
come to stay." Rev. Mr. Faithless, from 
the back of the platform, cries sadly, 
"Dear Fanatic, I am very sorry to say 
it, but I believe thej" have come to stay." 
To which the Fanatic replies, " NOT at 

MY HOUSE." 

But has the Sundaj^ paper come to 
stay ? Why should any one think so of 
an institution as recent as the war ? We 
have seen institutions that had behind 
them more persons, more money, more 
political influence, more sincerity of 
■conviction, and a thousand fold more of 
age give way before the march of ideas. 
Duelling is centuries older than Sunday 
papers, but who believes it has come to 
stay? Its death struggle is already on. 

I see no staying qualities in the Sun- 
day press. My own belief is that Sun- 
day advertising, which is the mainstay 
of the Sunday newspapers, is a craze, 
like roller skating rinks, that has not 
"come to stay," but has got to go. The 
two first merchants in the land, John 
W^anamaker and Marshall Field, get on 
without Sunday advertising, and many 
w4io are less wise will some day learn 
that the days to advertise are the days 
when readers can buy what is adver- 
tised. It is absurd to suppose that, with 
a score of blanket pages of gossip to 
read, and other members of the family 
waiting for their turn, the advertise- 
ments in the Sunday papers are so care- 
fully read as to be generally remembered 
to the next day. When our Christian 
business men come to realize how they 
waste their money as well as kill their 
influence for good by opening their bus- 
iness on Sunday in newspaper columns — 
it might as well be at their stores — the 
Sunday newspaper will lose its mainstay 
and give its employees and the public a 
rest. 

Both the advertisers in Sunday papers 
and their owners, as I know, are in 
some cases uneasy in conscience, and as 
they are very largely in the churches 
they ought to become more so rather 



than less, and will, if pastors are faith- 
ful. Let some new paper proprietor 
make the Saturday paper the special 
number of the week, both for reading 
matter and advertising, and prove the 
uselessness of a Sunday issue. 
. Equity should be used as a watch- 
word for the enactment, improvement 
and enforcement of our Sabbath laws. 
In the general suspension of Sunday 
work and business there are three noto- 
rious exceptions. Let those who are in 
the habit of laying all the wounds of 
the Sabbath upon the "foreigner" re- 
member that while he runs the saloon, 
the American keeps a yet larger num- 
ber in Sunday slavery by his Sunday 
trains and Sunday newspapers. The sa- 
loons, the rains and the newspapers are 
allowed to carry on their business se- 
cretly, or publicly in the interests of 
their rich proprietors while the little 
shops of the poor are closed. A few 
Sabbaths since in New York, when all 
the rich florists were selling flowers with- 
out interferance, contrary to law, a burly 
policeman arrested an Italian w^io was 
selling five cent button hole bouquets, 
and doubtless made him and all his 
friends anarchists. If such discrimina- 
tion is made in the law itself the legis- 
lature perpetrates a crime against equi- 
ty. Such law is violation of law and 
cannot long be enforced. The only law 
that can be justified in theory or main- 
tained in practice is a law which impar- 
tially forbids, in rich or poor, all forms 
of Sunday work that are not works of 
mercy or necessity. 

To those who say it would make a 
"blue Sundaj^" to stop all Sunday 
papers, Sunday excursions, Sunday 
mails, and to close up tobacconists and 
confectioners as well as saloons, the ab- 
solutely conclusive answer is, "Toron- 
to." There the Sabbath is a day of quiet 
rest, in which not the roaring train 
and the secret saloon, but the happy 
home and the cheerful church, are cen- 
tral. Were Toronto's laws forced on its 
people by some iron ruler? Are they 
struggling for "personal liberty"? 
Nay, there is not even a visible minor- 
ity that want our Sunday slavery. In 



56 

our country two millions ai-e held in but also to his crime against the men 
the Egyptian bondage of Sabbathless who are needlessly kept from rest and 
toil under the lash of Greed and Lust, home and culture of conscience that he- 
who cry as they ply the whip, "The may be amused. And so, not only from 
few must sacrifice their Sunday rest for Toronto, but from within, comes the 
the comfort of the many." Tha"com- confirmation of that profound Bible 
fort" is severely disturbed by con- saying that in order to make the Sab- 
science, which points the Sunday excur- bath " a delight''' we must "turn away 
sionist not only to his sin against God, from pleasure." 



I 



THE SUNDAY SALOON. 



Rey. R. S. Mac Arthur: " There are 
two great questions now before the 
American people ; they are the suppres- 
sion of the Uquor traffic, and the preser- 
vation of the Lord's Day. These ques- 
tions are really one. destroy the saloon, 
and you do much to preserve the Sab- 
bath. Preserve the Sabbath fully and 
you cripple the saloon g-reatlj^" 

Hon. T. V. Po\\T)ERLY, Zlaster Work- 
man of the Knights of Labor: "I be- 
lieve in Sunday rest. So do the Knights 
of Labor. Disconnect nie from all 
organizations, consider me as an Ameri- 
can citizen, and I have to say, speaking 
for myself, that I have fault to find with 
the saloons. When the saloon is open 
on Sunday some workingmen's homes 
are closed. The dry goods man closes 
his place, but on the door of the saloon 
which has its curtain down and the front 
entrance shut you will find a legend 
directing you to the door that is open. 
If the dry goods man is compelled to 
close on Sunday the saloon ought to 
be closed. I believe that in five years 
the sun will shine on a country whose 
saloons are closed on Sunday. If I had 
my way the saloons would be closed 
until the next Sunday. 

"What have the saloons ever done for 
humanity ? How many souls have they 
saved? How many people have they 
clothed, except the saloon keeper's 
family? When men have a strike the 
saloon keeper often contributes more 
than the dry goods man, but he robs 
them of more. I never knew one of 
them to give a cent that he did not 
expect a dollar in return. AVhy shouldn't 
they close on Sunda}'^? I know of no 
class that needs a rest on Sunday more 
and time for thinking about their souls. 
If they will not do it voluntarily, let us 
make them do so. I would advise you 
to keep up this agitation. Don't let 
these meetings stop. If any of you are 
legislators or counselors, use your influ- 
ence to secur<j Sunday closing. If any 



one having the power to make the laws 
or to enforce them refuses to aid you» 
select some one who will." — From re- 
port in Chicago Neivs. 

Boston Post (Democratic), Editorial 
Correspondence, Marches, 1889: "Much 
has been said and written about the 
innocent and wholesome custom of beer 
drinking as pursued in some public hall 
or garden by whole families, the children 
included. But apart from the moral 
and physical benefits to be derived from 
swallowing immense draughts of lager, 
the circumstances under which it is 
done on a Sunday are not pleasing. 
The following is an account of a typical 
beer garden : ^ 

' It was as hot as a furnace, garishly 
decorated and lighted, and filled to over- 
flowing with a motley crowd. Little 
tables, with four seats at each table, 
were arranged as closely together as 
they could be. Every seat was occu- 
pied, and a fringe of humanity stood up 
around the walls. There were perhaps 
400 men and boys, and fifty women in the 
place. Clouds of smoke from 400 cigars, 
cigarettes and pipes made the hot air 
stifling. The rattle of beer glasses on. 
the tables could be heard above the 
clamor of voices and the waiters crying- 
for beer at the bar. At one end of the 
room was a sort of stage, and at one 
side of it a piano of cracked and un- 
certain tone, on which a young man_ 
thumped out at intervals faintly recog- 
nizable waltz tunes. Whenever he 
seemed to get tired, a short-haired young 
woman, dressed in black, with hectic? 
cheeks, sang variety songs. But neither 
to the tinted young woman nor to the 
piano of antique tone did the company 
pay the slightest attention, but called 
steadily for beer. A stream of people 
went in and out of this resort, and the 
policeman on the corner leaned on a 
lamppost and looked at the stars. ^ 

Better than this, from eveiy point ol: 
view, is the most ultra-Puritan Sunday." 



58 



Denver News (Democratic) : * ' Nearly 
all lines of business take a rest 
on Sunday, and there is no reason 
why a traffic that is always harmful, and 
trebly so on that day, should be an ex- 
ception. There will be no let up in the 
fight imtil the dives and saloons are all 
compelled to respect the law and the 
Sabbath day." 

Chicago Tribune (Republican) : "The 
American people will not submit to a 
nullification of their laws. Saloon keep- 
ers must obey them the same as any 
other class of people. This has nothing 
i}0 do with prohibition. It is purely a 
•question of the supremacy of the law. 
Jt is the same question that was settled 
in our Haymarket." 

The Voice, New York (Prohibition): 
*'*Blue laws' — you may call them, 
gentlemen ; but blue, black, or green, 
they are the laws, and if Gambrinus pro- 
poses to defy them, it is high time he 
liad his treasonable neck in a noose." 

New York Sun (Democratic); *'It is 
indisputable that the opening of the sa- 
loon on the first day of the week would 
he the ' entering wedge ' for the destruc- 
i:ion of Sunday as it has been observed 
so long in both this country and Eng- 
land. With the saloon legally open 
it would not be many years before the 
theatres also would be open, and by 
the beginning of the next century 
Sunday in New York would be as it 
is now in Paris. Every place would 
l)e opened. Shopkeepers would not be 
able to resist the temptations offered by 
the holiday and the crowds of pleasure 
seekers on the streets, while the 
churches might suffer from the increased 
secular competition, for already the ma- 
jority of the people of New York are 
irresponsive to their appeal. That such 
an innovation would deprive great num- 
bers of laborers of their one day of rest 
in the seven cannot be disputed. If our 
Sunday becomes like the Sunday of 
Prance and Germany, of course it will 
be a day of labor to something like the 
same extent it now is in those countries. 



Here, as there, many thousands of peo- 
ple will work the week through, their 
greed or their poverty preventing them 
from taking a day of rest." 

Manly Tello, Editor of Catholic 
Universe (at Ohio Sabbath Convention, 
Dec. 17, '89) : ''It would be an abuse of 
toleration should the followers of Christ 
permit the followers of Bacchus to force 
them to the wall by the opening of sa- 
loons on Sunday. We Catholics are 
with you for the whole term of the war 
for a legal protection of the Day. If 
Christian men thought less of their po- 
litical gods, and more of humanity, 
there would be a joint Catholic and non- 
Catholic Christian lobby at the Capital 
that no legislator would dare disregard 
in the interest of the Sunday saloon. 
For the sake of noble, suffering woman- 
hood let the saloons be closed at least on 
Sunday, that the homes may rejoice." 

Father C. A. Walworth, of Albany: 
" It is hard for me to comprehend that 
large class of men who, although they 
love law and order, yet have so long 
been willing to vote for the friends of 
drunkenness and disorder, who venerate 
the ' Lord's Day,' and yet have no votes 
to defend it. It is a deep mystery, this 
moral apathy, which will allow so many 
respectable and religious men in your 
city of New York to send here to Albany 
year after year, the same representa- 
tives whose only acknowledged constitu- 
ency is the 'liquor ring.' I trust that 
this thing has now come to an end. 
The Personal Liberty party (God be 
thanked for their folly), have now 
forced us into a position where we must 
either renounce all hope of law and or- 
der, and prove traitors to our faith in 
God, or else crush these slaves of the 
liquor traffic beneath our ballots. We 
must now either yield up the great day 
of Christian woi-ship to the demands of 
lawless greed, or vote down the men 
who would by their votes destroj it. 
The motto of all true men at this crit- 
ical time should be * The ^Lord's Day — it 
must and shall be preserved.' " 



59 



SUNDAY CLOSING OF SALOONS. 



An Address BY Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts 
m Tabor Opera House, Denver, 
June 23, 1880. 
Mag-nificent Colorado is ' ' the crest of 
the continent," and Denver is the crown 
of the crest. No other of the great 
cities of America is walled with sucii 
golden mountains, or located in such 
heavenlj' atmosphere. It is as if, a mile 
above New York, a great city had been 
built on anchored balloons, where the 
sick could go. for mountain air, not at 
great cost, but at great gain, to get 
money and health at once. Your homes 
and public buildings and business estab- 
lishments and auditoriums are not sur- 
passed by any other city of equal size. 
"What is better, your people, a majority 
of them, are refined and law-abiding, 
many of them aggressively good. These 
Avere my thouglits as I w^as driven about 
your streets on Friday. If I had been a 
father traveling with grown sons, seek- 
ing for them a settlement, I would have 
said, " Seek no further." But I went 
through 3^our streets again this Sabbath 
morning, and if I had been seeking such 
settlements for sons, I should have said 
to them, " We must seek further or else 
Avait a little for Denver to root up these 
remains of its wild-west oats — these 
Sunday saloons that openly defy the 
laws of the State, and lead others to 
like crimes in other open shops all about 
them. Why should any one want a 
stimulant on any day in Colorado ? Its 
very atmosphere is white wine, quicken- 
ing the movements of both heart and 
foot. Surely nature needs no whip in 
such a climate. 

It seems incredible that any one can 
break the Sabbath in such a State as Colo- 
rado, wliere the first sight that meets 
the eye as he goes forth at morn is 
white-robed mountains standing like 
angels at the gate of Heaven and look- 
ing earthward through the gate of God, 
as if in benediction. Every Colorado 
man should put the mountains into his 
daily thanksgiving. A yoimg woman 
riding on the cars through Central New 
York, said to a^ follow passenger, point- 
ing out of the window : " I suppose tliat 
is what 3^ou call a hill ? " '* Yes, did you 



never see a hill before ? " " Never, ex- 
cept in pictures." "Where did you 
come from ? " *' From Kankakee in the 
prairies, and I thought it was about 
time I was getting out to see some- 
thing." 

The best soil for raising men is in the 
hills and mountains. In such soil grew 
the Waldenses, the Swiss, the Scotch, 
the Welsh. 

In God's book of nature Colorado is 
a glorious psalm and sin in such a 
place is sacrilege. Not one little spot, 
but the whole State is the Garden of 
God. Alas, that there should be such 
weeds left in it as Sunday saloons. 
When these are removed through the 
present uprising of good citizens, and 
when the saloons are also rooted out of 
all the other days of the week, Colo- 
rado will be the crest of the Continent 
indeed, and Denver its untarnished 
crown. (Applause.)* 

In the presence of this magnificent 
audience, which compliments Denver by 
its wholesale sacrifice of Sabbath after- 
noon naps for this meeting in the inter- 
est of reform, I wish to submit three 
reasons that I sometimes give, in speak- 
ing to Chambers of Commerce, why 
merchants and manufacturers, as such, 
should take a part in closing the Sunday 
saloons. 

First, let us note a reason why the 
merchant, as such, should lend a hand. 
The recent Sabbath Congress in Paris, 
advised that pa^^ day should be changed 
from Saturday to the early part of tiie 
week. This would help both the Sab- 
bath and the Saturday half-holiday. 
Since only those who wish Sunday 
drunks or the profits of them oppose 
this proposal, is it strange that it makes 
so little headway? At present nearly 
all employees are paid Saturday night, 
and there is more money in the pockets 
of the people when Sabbath morning 
dawns than on any other morning. 
This money the merchants want. They 
will race hard for it. But the law says, 

♦Nine months later the people crowded the same 
auditor! to celebrate the accomplit^hmont of Sun- 
day clos which had been secured l)y a union of 
good cit ns at the polls. 



60 



"Halt for the Rest Day, and all 
start tog-ether Monday morning-." A 
great majority of the merchants obey 
orders, for the law's sake, or for con- 
science sake, or for their employees' 
sake, or for their own sake, or for all 
these reasons. The liquor dealers, how- 
ever break out of the line, and get a 
whole day's start in this race for the 
Saturday night's wages, take the cream 
and the very milk itself, leaving to 
honest merchants, who make "a fair 
exchange," only the dregs of debt. 
Surely merchants who are timid about 
taking up moral reforms should take up 
Sunday closing as a matter of business, 
and stop the depredations of the Sun- 
day saloons as they would suppress a 
horde of burglars. (Applause.) 

The Sunday saloon robs not only the 
honest merchant of his share of tlie Sat- 
urday nights' wages, but also the manu- 
facturer of his right to sober working- 
men on Monday and Tuesday. In Exe- 
ter Hall, London, June 14th, 1875, Mr. 
B. Whitworth, M. P. , said tliat in a busi- 
ness concern with which he was con- 
nected, which employed about ' 7,000 
men, work had to be given up altogether 
on Mondays because so many of the men 
were detained by Sunday sprees, thus 
causing the company a loss of $175,000 
per year. Surely Chambers of Commerce 
cannot afford to ignore such a foe to 
business. 

Let it not be thought that England 
monopolizes this state of things. At 
Trenton, New Jersey, I was told that the 
work in the potteries was greatly hin- 
dered not only on Monday but on Tues- 
day also by the Sunday liquor selling, 
and this same condition of things in 
Louisiana led its French Catholic plant- 
ers, in commercial self defense, to their 
new policy of Sunday closing. The 
community must choose between the 
Sunday closing of saloons and the Mon- 
day closing of factories. 

The third of these purely commercial 
reasons for Sunday closing of saloons, 
one that has a vital relation to the 
whole business community, I have 
already hinted at — the fact that J)oth 
the quantity and the quality of new set- 



tlers in a Western city is affected by th& 
moral status of the city. Many a New 
England father is wiser than Lot, who 
pitched his tent at Sodom, and so laid up, 
with riches which he could not keep, 
sorrow and shame that he could not 
escape. The famous "Committee of 
500 " that is fighting the Sunday saloon 
in Cincinnati have put on their banner, 
" For the material and moral Interests 
of our city." The Sunday saloons, hy 
eighteen years of unrestrained anarchy, 
educated a mob that not only burned 
the Coui^t House but destroyed millions 
of prospective property by driving 
hundreds of residents away and keeping 
thousands from coming. By the law of 
like to like, the city that by lawlessness 
invites the lawless, and drives others 
away, makes it harder every year to 
recover itself. 

Your Denver Eeal Estate Exchange 
was unusually sagacious when on March 
11th last it adopted the following pre- 
ambles and resolution : 

"Whereas, an agitation now exists for 
the closing of saloons on Sunday ; and 

Whereas, in our opinion such a result 
would add to the already good name of 
the city, aid our wage earners in saving 
money, and thereby conduce to their 
buying homes and more family com- 
forts, lessening our criminal dockets and 
hence our taxes, and redound to the 
benefit of our city ; therefore, be it 

Resolved, That we heartily approve of 
the desired object, Sunday closing, and 
that we urge upon all voters at the 
pending election to see to it that they 
vote for only such candidates as will 
carry out such plan, if elected, and that 
we will do all we can, as individuals, to 
aid in this laudable purpose." 

Having given the reasons for Sunday 
closing that appeal especially to Capital, 
let me now submit one that belong's to 
Labor. I am told that in a recent " Sun- 
day Rest Meeting" in Chicago, the 
largest petition presented was from its 
overworked bartenders, who have toiled 
early and late for seven days in the 
week for many years. Their Sunday 
work leads to work for other salesmen 
also. Wherever saloons are allowed to 



61 



open, either by law or custom, on the Rest 
Day merchants who have better things 
to sell, as I have shown, feel it necessary 
to do the same in order to get their share 
of the Saturda}" night's wages, and so 
the Rest Day itself is more and more 
destro^^ed wherever an unjust exception 
is made for any kind of business that is 
not a work of mercy or necessit3". This 
oonsideration, wisely and patiently pre- 
sented, ought to win to Sunday closing 
even drinking men, especially all the 
toilers, to whom the imperilled Rest Day 
is a precious boon. 

The Sunday saloon not only robs many 
a clerk of his Sabbath rest, but also 
many a mechanic of his Mondaj^'s wages 
by disabling his fellow workman on 
whose A\x)rk his own depend. Worst of 
all, the saloon, by its Sunday fascina- 
tions, robs many a laborer who would 
otherwise escape. There was deep 
pathos in the remark of a laborer's wife 
iQ Cleveland to her pastor in regard to 
her husband, "I think we could pull 
John through if it weren't for Sunda3\" 
Shame on us that we allow the Ameri- 
can Sabbath to become a dread and 
curse in the homes of the poor, to which 
God sent it as a royal blessing ! 

There is a fifth reason for Sunday 
closing which appeals to every man 
who values security of life, property, 
purity. The worst foe of all these is the 
Sunday saloon. Liquor selling, bad 
enough on a business day is far worse 
on a generaJ holiday. Liquor and leisure 
never meet but for mischief. It is worst 
of all when such a general holiday is in 
conjunction with a pay day and comes 
every week. Partial Sunday closing of 
saloons was ordered by Parliament foi- 
Ireland — the five chief cities, Dublin, 
Belfast, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, 
being excepted, and also " bona fide 
travelei-s," who were defined iis persons 
who had journeyed three miles, which 
distance became at once, to a great 
multitude, "a Sal)bath day's journey." 
But even this partial Sunday closing, in 
small towns only, reduced the total 
arrests for the day ol per cent. — more 
than half — in tlie districts covered by 
the law. In such districts the drunken- 



ness was only one-fifth as much as in 
the five cities excepted, in which last 
one-sixth of the drunkenness occurred 
on Sundays, while in the Sunday clos- 
ing districts it was only one-seventeenth. 
Sunclaj^ closing in Scotland, with no 
cities excepted, but only the " travel- 
ers," reduced the arrests for the day 
seven-eighths. Property, purity and 
life were only one-eighth as much im- 
perilled on that day as before, because 
liquor selling was partially suspended. 
The same percentage of reduction in ar- 
rests was accomplished in Philadelphia 
during the first year of strict Sundaj^ 
closing under the new Brook's law. 
With Sunday opening of saloons in 
Cincinnati one-third of the total crime 
of all days for the year occurred in their 
Continental Sundays. With Sunday 
closing even the Commercial Gazette 
admits that the city is as quiet as a 
country village and the police have 
nothing to do.* This is sufficient an- 

* The story of this bravest of battles against the 
Sunday saloon is told in " Our Day," Boston, for 
Sept., 18S9 and Jan., 1890. For other facts and 
arguments bearing on Sunday closing consult my 
"Sabbath for Man." (See "Liquor Sciling," in 
Index). " Occasional Paper," Feb. 1885, page 54-63, 
of Lord's Day Observance Society, 20 Strand, W. C, 
London. Monthly Document of American Sabbath 
Union for June, 1889, 23 Park Row, New York. "A 
Plea for the Sunday Closing of Public Houses," 
Workingmen's Lord's-day Eest Association, 13 Bed- 
ford Row, London, W. C. 

THE PURPOSES OF LIQUOR'S "LIBERTY LEAGUES." 

The New York State Organization of German- 
American Societies propounded a series of ques- 
tions to every candidate for the Legislature, among 
which were the following : 

"Are you in favor of the modification of the 
present Excise and Sunday laws ? 

Are you in favor of the passage of a general law 
permiiting the sale on Sundays of light wines and 
malt beverages ? 

Are you in favor of the passage of a law permitting 
the sale on Sundays of light wines and malt bever- 
ages in cities of 10,000 inhabitants or over ? 

Are you in favor of the passage of a law permit- 
ting the sale on Sundays of light wines and malt 
beverages between the hours of 12 o'clock noon 
and 12 o'clock midnight, or during any other por- 
tion of such day ? 

Are you in favor of the passage of a law permit- 
ting the opening on Sundays to the public of art 
galleries, museums, and lil)raries ? 

Are you in favor of secular music on Sundays in 
public parks, squares, gardens, or halls ?" 

Unless answered in the affirmative, the whole 
liquor fraternity were to oppose their election.— 
National Temperance AdvorAite Report, 1S8S. 

The Personal Liberty League of the West, saya 
in its Constitution : 



62 



swer to the absurd fallacy of the Seventh 
day Adventist leaders, that idleness on 
Sunday, as in prisons, is a promoter of 
vice. It is only where saloons are open 
that there is more crime on the Rest 
Day than on others. Similar reductions 
of crime, and so of taxation as well as 
of peril to purity and property and life, 
have been achieved wherever else Sun- 
day closing has been tried even for a 
single day. Sabbath laws are therefore 
consistent with liberty in the same way 
as other less effective laws for the pre- 
vention of crime. 

Sunday closing is the law, not only in 
Ireland, since 1878, and Scotland, since 
1854, but also in Wales, since 1886, in 
the seven Provinces of Canada, and in 
New Zealand, and in most of the Aus- 
tralian Colonies. In all these places the 
people cling to it as a blessing. That it 
ought to prevail in England is the opin- 
ion of a majority of its people as attested 
by petitions of more than five millions 
in six recent years, by the favorable 
opinion of four-fifths out of a million 
householders whose opinions were re- 
cently taken, and by a two-thirds vote 
of the House of Commons on March 
24th, 1886. 

Sixthly, prohibitionists should favor 
Sunday closing, when presented apart 
from any compromising license for 
otiier days, because it is one-fourth Pro- 
hibition. In Scotland it cut down the 
consumption of liquor one-fourth, and 
so proved itself a quarter loaf of un- 
poisoned bread, the best sort of an appe- 
tizer for the whole loaf in communities 
where they have never tasted it. It is 
not enough to tell the people of other 
States that Maine and Iowa and Kansas 
have tried prohibition and like it. Some 
deny this, and the short cut out of the 
debate is to put a sample of the prohibi- 
tion loaf into every city for one day in 

"The special purpose and object of this league 
is to prevent, by energtic and organized opposition, 
any attempt of the Sunday and prohibition fan- 
atics to accomplish their ends, which consists in 
the revival of antiquated laws that are in conflict 
with the fundamental principles of the republic 
and the spirit of the times." — Christian Statesman, 
June 13, 1889. 



every week. Even such an imperfect 
sample as Sunday closing must be, with 
every one at liberty to fill his sideboard, 
or himself, on Saturday night, will be a. 
logical premise for the conclusion, that 
if such imperfect closing one day in the 
week so reduces crime, complete National 
jDrohibition would certainly almost ban- 
ish it. Where a non-partisan charge on 
the fortifications of the liquor traffic, in 
a constitutional amendment campaign, 
has failed of victory, the moral is not to 
desert non-partisan allies or to give up 
the fight altogether, but, while mining^ 
and sapping for another attack on the 
citadel in the future, to join the same al- 
lies in capturing the outer breastworks 
and key of the position, the Sabbath. 

Sunday closing is not required by 
Statute law in California, Nevada, Mon- 
tana and Texas, nor in the Territories of 
Idaho and Arizona, nor in the District 
of Columbia. In California, Texas and 
the District of Columbia, it can be for- 
bidden by city ordinance, and is so for- 
bidden in some instances. Where these 
city ordinances exist, and in all the other 
States and Territories by statute laws, 
Sunday liquor selling, except on a 
physician's written prescription, is a 
crime. This suggests our "seventhly 
and lastly," — a strange statement — 
namely, that the public officers who 
have sworn to enforce the laws, should 
aid in the enforcement of Sunday 
closing. How quaintly ancient sounded 
that saying of President Harrison in his 
inaugural : " As a citizen may not elect 
what laws he will obey, neither may the 
Executive elect which he will enforce !" 

At noon to-day I saw a man boldly 
walk along your streets with a burglar's 
jimmy in his hand, and feloniously enter 
a shop, unmolested by a policeman who 
stood by. The jimmy was a mug. Let 
every law-abiding man help to make it 
felt that the man who enters a saloon 
at a time when he cannot legally enter, 
is a burglar. He has illegally obtained 
possession of property. His accomplice 
inside is a receiver of stolen goods. He 
is receiving money which he cannot then 
and there legally receive. The saloon 
keeper who opens his place either pub- 



I 



63 



licly or secretly on the Sabbath and is 
not arrested, is an escaped convict, that 
is, he is a criminal who has escaped pun- 
ishment. The mayor and police com- 
missioners are perjurers if they do 
not keep their oaths by stopping this 
wholesale crime against the law. [Ap- 
plause] . 

It is sometimes said that the Sunday 
closing- law is a failure. Nay, it is the 
officials who surrender their scepters to 
the saloons who are the failures. Some- 
times a mayor will say that he cannot 
enforce the law. There is one thing- 
such a ma^'or can do — he can resign. 

A certain mayor made himself an un- 
deserved reputation by refusing to put 
up on the City Hall a foreign flag on a 
foreign holiday. That same mayor, by 
confessing that he could not make the 
foreigners keep our laws, and advising 
that we should therefore surrender our 
Sabbath to the saloons, virtually pulled 
down the American flag. 

It is said that a new Western gov- 
ernor, on his first visit, with his suite, to 
the State Reform School, attempting to 
draw the boj^s out by questions, after 
the method he had often used in Sab- 
bath schools, said, "Boys, why are we 
here?" The swift answer was, "To be 
reformed." No class of public men 
need reforming more than our execu- 
tive officers, whose first duty is the 
enforcement of the laws. Those four 
words express the chief political issue 
of to-day. We need in our governors 
and mayors, to borrow a phrase of the 
New Orleans Picayune, less jawbone and 
more backbone. "Government is not 
mere advice." We need men like Dan- 
iel, of whom the Bible says, "As for 
this Daniel an excellent spirit was in 
him," which a Sabbath-school boy, 
speaking better than he knew, read, 
" As for this Daniel an excellent spine 
was in him." In too many cities, the 
mayor lias moral curvature of the spine. 
Over and over again same great city has 
elected a " reform mayor," only to find 
him in a few months a deformed mayor. 
For such a work a stronger man is need- 
ed than for governor or senator — a 
man with a "backbone like a circus 



pole " — such a man as is described in 
the Scotch psalm : 

"Blest is the man in stable trust, 
Like Zion's mount who stands full just; 
And bendeth no whit, nor yet dolh reel, 
But standeth forever as stiff as steel.'''' 

Such was Mayor Nehemiah of Je- 
rusalem, who, single handed, restored 
the Rest Day to that city, when even 
the church people had almost ceased tO' 
observe it (Neh. xiii., 15-32). 

Several mayors, of late, have attempt- 
ed to prove that the mayor of a great 
city has no more responsibility for law 
enforcement than a private citizen. Such 
mayors should be turned into private 
citizens at the next election. Whenever 
rulers are not a terror to evildoers, well- 
doers should become a terror to them. 
(Applause.) 

But the citizen should not allow a 
mayor's unfaithfulness to nullify a good 
law. In a rural church one Sunday, a 
deacon said to his associate, "I shall 
not be able to attend Sunday-school to- 
day. There is to be abase ball match in 
our section of the town, and Fin going.''' 
He went ; the base ball match did not 
come off, and he had the assurance from 
the parties themselves that they would 
not attempt it again. Whether there 
is or is not a Law and Order League in 
town, every citizen should be a Citizens' 
Committee of one for the enforcement 
of law. 

Better still that such individuals 
should unite, as did the twenty-five hun- 
dred that formed the victorious Cincin- 
nati Committee, which defeated the 
mayor and the city majority that elect' 
ed him to break his oath, because the 
Committee had something greater even 
than a city majority behind them, name- 
ly, a State majority that had elected a 
Sabbath law to be enforced. 

That Sunday closing laws can be en- 
forced, even in the largest cities, and 
even when the personal deviltry party 
have elected their own mayor, has been 
proved in other instances also.' 

In every one of our cities where there 
is not already a Law and Order League^ 
or its e(iuivalent, there is need of one, 
and every sucii League, I believe, should 



64 



fight not one but all four heads of the 
hydra that is devouring our youth by 
gambling-, lust, intemperance, and Sab- 
bath breaking. All who are against 
either of these evils are against them 
all, and in cities should unite in one 
organization to assail them on the sim- 
l^le platform of saving the young by 
enforcing existing laws against this 
complex dragon. 

In the words of Father McDevitt, who 
«its upon this platform and has often 
spoken from it in this crusade against 
.Sunday saloons, -'it is the will of hell 
that these places shall remain open; it 
is the will of the people, yea, of the 
Most High God that they shall be 
closed." Let not this " will " of the peo- 
ple be the ' ' will " of the dead that takes 
a year for execution. If your present 
officers regard the will of the saloonists 
more than that of the people, let ballots 
*' execute the freeman's will as lightning 
■does the will of God." (Applause.) 

Some of you have heard the good story 
of the great Bishop Peck, whose three 
hundred pounds were so out of propor- 
tion to his name — the story of his return 
from a brief residence in San Francisco, 
before he was elected to the bishopric. 
Folding his hands over his vast stomach 
he said, with no thought of levity, '* The 
Pacific slopes greet you." I mention 
this familiar story about him only to 



prepare for a less familiar one. One 
election day this great man stood for 
hours in line in order to do his duty as a 
voter. As he at last began to get near 
the ballot box a drunken foreigner tried 
to crowd him back and take his place in 
the line. He remonstrated in vain. 
" Well, did he get in? " said a friend, to 
whom lie was telling the story. " No, 
he got out.'' "What did you do? Did 
you strike him ? " "No, I just leaned on 
Mm.'' So let your heavy men lean on 
the drunken foreigners of the baser sort 
who interere with your political right 
to a quiet and orderly Sabbath, until 
they "get out" or take their rightful 
place. 

A king who was beautifying his capi- 
tal, having a fancy for ornate buildings, 
ordered the tearing down of a plain 
stone structure connected with the his- 
tory of the nation from the beginning. 
As he stood by to see it demolished, 
when only a stone or two had been 
removed, this inscription was uncov- 
ered : " These gates, with their country, 
stand or fall." Astonished, he with- 
drew his hand, and let the ancient 
structure stand. In our midst stands 
the citadel of liberty — the American 
Sabbath. Let us permit no one to tear 
out of it a single stone, for "These 

GATES, WITH THEIR COUNTRY, STAND OR 
FALL." 



JUST After the Sunday Closing 
Victory in Cincinnati. 



Commercial Gazette: "Cincinnati 
^ould give Puritanical Boston points 
on a quiet Sunday yesterday. To all 
intents and purposes the law was ob- 
served. As may be imagined, this 
marked change in the course of saloon 
keepers had the effect of making the 
city unusually quiet — quiet and orderly 
enough to suit a Quaker." 

Associated Press Dispatch; " The Sun- 
day law is effectively enforced here 
to-day. There is absolutely not a single 
place within the city limits where a 
drop of intoxicating liquoi'S can be had, 
and as a result the police report the 
quietest Sabbath day of which there is 
■any record." 

Times-Star: "There is no less 
money in Cincinnati on Monday morn- 



ing than on Saturday night, whether 
the saloons are open or shut. It is, 
however, in different pockets. Witli 
the Owen law in force, the money paid 
as wages on Saturday night finds its 
way to the grocer, the baker, and the 
dry goods and clothing merchant. It 
goes out for fuel, it goes toward paying 
the rent. The milkman gets some of 
it, and the police court none of it. 
There is no loss, positively none, unless 
Cincinnati is the saloon and the saloon 
is Cincinnati. . . . Cincin"hati's 
saloons are to be kept closed on Sun- 
day, the good effects of which policy 
have already begun to appear in the 
lessened criminal record of Monday 
morning." 

Herald and Presbyter: "If Sunday 
closing" IS a spasm, we know of no 
remedy that will cure such spasms, and 
prevent frequent repetition, except the 
removal of the cause." 



OPINION OF JUDGE ALLEN G. 

*We have no union of Church and 
State, nor has our Government ever 
"been vested with authority to enforce 
any rehgious observance simi)ly because 
it is rehgious. Of course it is no objec- 
tion, but, on the contrary, is a high re- 
commendation, to a legislative enact- 
ment, based on justice or public policy, 
ihat is found to coincide ^vith the pre- 
cepts of a pure religion ; but the fact is 
nevertheless true that the power to make 
the law rests in the legislative control 
over things temporal, and not over 
things spiritual. ^Thus the statute upon 
which the defendant relies, prohib- 
iting common labor on the Sabbath, 
could not stand for a moment as a law 
of this State if its sole foundation was 
the Christian duty of keeping that day 
holy and its sole motive to enforce the 
observance of that duty. For no power 
over things merely spiritual has ever 
been delegated to the Government, while 
any preference of one religion over 
another, which the statute would give 
upon the above hypothesis, is directly 
prohibited by the Constitution. Acts 
evil in their nature, or dangerous to the 
public welfare, may be forbidden and 
punished, though sanctioned by one re- 
ligion and prohibited by another ; but 
this creates no preference whatever, for 
they would be equally forbidden and 
punished if all religions permitted them. 
Thus, no plea of his religion could shield 
a murderer, ravisher or bigamist ; for 
the community would be at the mercy 
of superstition if such crimes as these 
could be permitted with impunity be- 
cause sanctioned by some religious de- 
lusion. "VVe are, then, to regard the 
statute under consideration as a mere 
municipal or police regulation, whose 
validity is neither strengthened nor 
weakened by the fact tliat tlie day of 
rest it enjoins is the Sabbath day. "Wis- 
dom requires that men should refrain 
from labor at least one day in seven, 
and the advantages of having tlie day 
of rest fixed, and so fixed as to happen 



THURMAN ON SABBATH LAWS. 

at regularly recurring intervals, are too 
obvious to be overlooked. It was within 
the constitutional competency of the 
General Assembly to require this cessa- 
tion of labor and to name the day of 
rest. It did so by the act referred to, 
and in accordance with the feeling of a 
majority of the people, the Christian 
Sabbath was very properly selected. 
But regarded merely as an exertion of 
legislative authority, the act would have 
had neither more nor less validity had 
any other day been adopted." Bloom 
V. Richards. 2d O. S., 391 and 892. The 
distinguished jurist also quotes with ap- 
probation the following from Specht v. 
The Commonwealth, 3 Barr, 313 : " All 
agree that to the well-being of society 
periods of rest are absolutely necessary. 
To be productive of the required advan- 
tage these periods must recur at stated 
intervals, so that the mass of which the 
community is composed may enjoy a 
respite from labor at the same time. They 
may be established by common consent, 
or, as is conceded, the legislative power 
of the State may, without impropriety, 
interfere to fix the time of their stated re- 
turn and enforce obedience to the direc- 
tion. When this happens some one day 
must be selected, and it has been said 
the round of the week presents none 
which, being preferred, might not be 
regarded as favoring some one of the 
numerous religious sects into whicl^ 
mankind are divided. In a Christian 
community, where a very large majority 
of the people celebrate the first day of 
the week as their chosen period of rest 
from labor, is it not surprising that that 
day should have received the legislative 
sanction ; and, as it is also devoted to 
religious observances, we are prepared 
to estimate the reason why the statute 
should speak of it as the Lord's Day, and 
denominate the infraction of its legal- 
ized rest a profanation. Yet this does 
not change the character of the enact- 
ment. It is still, essentially, but a civil 
regulation." 
cr, 



SABBATH LAWS DEFENDED BY RET. JOSIAH STRONG, D. 
AUTHOR OF " OUR COUNTRY." 



Sabbath laws prohibit labor on the 
first day of the week, except works of 
necessity and mercy, and forbid certain 
amusementSo These two classes of pro- 
hibition rest on two different grounds ; 
first the duty of the State to secure to 
every man the right to rest on the Sab- 
bath, and second, the duty of the State 
to guard the leisure of tlie day from uses 
subversive of its object as a day of rest 
and dangerous to public morals. 

The right of weekly rest is based on 
its necessity. It has been shown by sci- 
entific inquiry, pursuing different lines 
of investigation, that the rest of the 
night does not entirely restore the vigor 
lost by the toil of the preceding day, 
and that without a weekly day of rest 
there is a gradual loss of strength and 
health. No physiological or hygienic 
fact is better established. This neces- 
sity of rest gives to every man the 
right to rest, and this right needs the 
civil law for its protection. Most men 
are employees engaged in shops and on 
farms and the like. They are subject 
to the authority of employers, who can 
usually discharge them at pleasure. Na- 
tural capacity, stimulated by competi- 
tion, usually leads the employer to get 
the most possible out of the employee. 
It has accordingly been found necessary 
to protect the rights of workmen by leg- 
islation which specifies the number of 
hours that shall constitute a day's 
work. For the same reason it has been 
found necessarjT- to protect the laborer's 
Rest Day by law, otherwise the power to 
dischajeg would compel to unwilling 
work. Instead of robbing men of their 
liberties, as we sometimes hear, Sabbath 
laws are designed to secure to every 
man liberty to rest. 

Sabbath laws do not reduce earnings. 
If men labored every day in the yeai* 
they would do no more work than they 



do now, resting one day in seven. In- 
deed, they would do even less. But this, 
is not the reason that the law forbids 
Sabbath work, even when a man prefers 
to work. Under our civilization the 
Uberty of rest for each is secured only 
by a law of rest for all. 

A man's doing business on the Sab- 
bath does not actually compel his com- 
petitors to do likewise, but it does in- 
flict a loss on those who refuse. AIL 
together they sell but little more in 
seven days than they would sell in six, 
and their profits are less because their 
expenses are increased. But if some do 
not sell, those who do draw away a part 
of their custom and thus inflict loss oix 
them. Of course a man of Christian 
principle will suffer the loss rather than. 
violate the Sabbath in self defense, bufc 
he has a right to call upon the State to 
protect him from that loss. Hence the 
principle that was laid down that the 
rest for each is dependent on a law of 
rest for all. 

Laws prohibiting certain amusements 
on the Sabbath, rest on a religious basis 
no more than do those forbidding work on 
that day. The State has exactly the same 
right to protect itself from immorality as 
from ignorance. Indeed, its obligation 
to foster morals is even greater than its 
duty to diffuse intelligence, for the for- 
mer is more essential to its existence. 
A holiday Sabbath seems to be pecu- 
liarly conducive to intemperance. Be- 
sides the temptation of opportunity, the 
lack of rest prevents the restoration of 
vigor, and the jaded frame, summoned 
to its accustomed burden, and feeling 
unequal to the load, learns to lean on 
some stimulus. Again, a holiday Sab- 
bath is destructive of popular morality 
because it is hostile to religion, which is 
the root of morals." 



" Judge Allen, of New York, has decided that as the Sabbath is older than the government, and has 
been legislated upon by colonial and early State authorities, if there were any doubt about the meaning of 
the Constitution securing freedom in religion, the continued acts of the Legislature would be very good 
evidence of the intent of its framers, and of the people who adopted it as their fundamental law. From 
1788 downward vaiious statutes have been in force to prevent Sabbath desecration, and prohibiting action 
that day which would have been lawful on other days. Sunday laws have invariably been sustained 
wherever a iudicial decision has been given. The dispossessors of Sabbath laws sometimes forget 
that they have undertaken to turn back the stiff current of Anglo-Saxon developnient. The_ American 
Sabbath has a manly grip, a quiet, strong way of holding its own, which sometimes becomes visible, not- 
withstanding many babblings and surface changes." 



SABBATH LAWS OF ALABAMA AND ARKANSAS. 



Alabama. — Criminal Code, § 4045. — 
Any person, Avho compels his child, ap- 
prentice, or servant to perform any 
Ia2>or on Sunda^^ except the custom- 
ary domestic duties of daily necessity or 
comfort, or works of charit}-^, or wlio en- 
gages ia sliooting, liuiitiiig, gaming, 
card playing, or racing on that day ; or 
who, being' a merchant or shopkeeper, 
druggist excepted, keeps open 
§tore on that day, must, on the first 
offense, be fined not less than $10, 
nor more than $20, and for tlie second, 
or any subsequent offense, must 
be fined not less than $20, nor 
more tlian $100, and may also 
be imprisoned in the county 
jail or sentenced to hard labor for the 
county, for not more than three 
months ; but the provisions of tliis sec- 
tion do not apply to the running of 
railroads, stages or steamboats, or 
vessels navigating- the waters of this 
State, or any manufacturing establish- 
ment \vhich requires to be kept in con- 
stant operation. § 4046. An^^ person, 
who opens, or causes to be opened, for 
the purpose of selling or trading, any 
pubUc market house or place on Sun- 
day, or opens, or causes to be opened, 
any stall or shop therein, or connected 
therewith, or brings anything for sale 
or barter to such market or place, or 
offers the same for sale therein on that 
day, or bin^s or sells therein on that 
day (including live stock or cattle), 
must, on conviction, be punished as 
prescribed in the preceding section. Any 
place whore people assemble for the 
purchase and sale of goods, wares arid 
merchandise, provisions, cattle, or othoi* 
articles, is a market-house or place, 
within the meaning of this section. 

Alaska.— No Sabbath law. 

ARiZONA.~See i)ag.i 114. 

-Arkansas.— Criminal Code, g 1883.— 
Evory person who shall, on the'Sabbath 
or Sunday, be found laboring, or shall 
compel his apprentice or servant to 



67 



labor or to perform other services than 
customary household duties of daily 
necessity, comfort or charity, on con- 
viction thereof shall be fined $1 for 
each separate offense. § 1884. Every 
apprentice or servant compelled to labor 
on Sunday shall be deemed a separate 
offense of the master. § 1885. The pro- 
visions of this act shall not apply to 
steamboats and other vessels navigat- 
ing the waters of the State, nor to such 
manufacturing establishments as re- 
quire to be kept in continual operation. 

Decisions : To prevent an inconvenient 
delay in traveling does not make the ex- 
ecution of a note a "work of neces- 
sity." Burns v. Moore, 52 Am. Rep., 
332. Money deposited for safe-keeping, 
action maintainable. Tamplin v. Still, 
77 Ala., 374. Keeping " open store" not 
shown by a single sale of liquor because 
of sickness. Dixon v. State, 76 Ala., 89. 
Note not delivered, not invalid because 
written and signed Sunday. Burns v. 
Moore, 76 Ala., 339. 

§ 1887.— This section amended 1885, 
Act xxxiii, to read as follows : Every 
person who shall, on Sunday, keep 
open any store or retail any 
goods, wares and merchandise, or 
keep open any dram sliop or gro- 
cery, or who shall keep the doors of 
the same so as to afford ingress or 
egress, or retail or sell any spirits or 
wine, shall, on conviction thereof, be 
fined in any sum not less than $25 nor 
more than ^100. [See Decisions below.] 

§ 1883.— Charity or necessity on the 
part of the customer may be shown in 
justification of the violation of the last 
preceding section. § 1889.— Every per- 
son who shall, on the Christian Sabbath 
or Sunday, be engaged in the running 
of any single Iiorse for any bet or 
wager on the speed of such horse, or 
for pastime, or for amusement without 
any bet or wager, or shall be engaged in 
any eock fight on any bet or wager 
foi' pastime, without bet or wager, shall, 



on conviction thereof, be fined in any 
sum not exceeding $100 nor less tlian 
$20.— Eev. Stat., Chap. 44, Div. 7, Art. 
2. § 1890. — Every person who shall on 
the Christian Sabbath or Sunday, be 
engag-ed in any game of brag, bluff, 
poker, seven-up, three-up, twenty-one, 
vingtun, thirteen cards, the odd trick, 
forty-five, whist, or at any other game 
at card§ known by any name now 
known to the laws, or with any 
other new name, for any bet or 
wager on such games, or for amuse- 
ment, without any bet or wager, shall, 
on conviction thereof, be fined in any 
sum not less than $25 nor more than 
$50.— Act Jan. 12, 1853. § 1891.— If 
any person shall be found Imniliig 
with a gun, with intent to kill game or 
shooting for amusement on the Sabbath 
day, on conviction thereof, he shall be 
fined in any sum not less than $5 nor 
more than §25 for each separate offense. 
—Act Jan. 19, 1855. § 1892.— If such 
offense should be committed by a mliior 
under the age of twenty-one years, and 
it shall be made to appear that the 
offense was committed by or with the 
consent or approbation of the parent or 
guardian of said minor, then such parent 
or guardian as aforesaid shall also be fined 
according to the provisions of section 
1891.— lb., Sec. 2. § 1893.— If any person 
shall be engaged in running a l8®i''§e 
race on the day known as the Christian 
Sabbath or Sunday, on a bet or wager, 
or for sport or pastime, with or without 
such bet or wager, he shall be deemed 
guilty of a misdemeanor and, on con- 
viction thereof, shall be fined in any sum 
not less than $25 nor more than $100. — 
Act Nov. 5, 1875, Sec. 4. 

Session Laws, 1885. Act xxxix. An 
Act to Prevent Sabbath-Breaking.— 
Sec. 1. That, hereafter, it shall be un- 
lawful for any club, person or persons to 
engage in any game or play of l$a§e- 
ball in this State on the Christian Sab- 
bath or Sunday. Sec. 2. That all per- 
sons violating -the preceding section 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and 



upon conviction thereof, shall be fined 
in any sum not less than $10 nor more 
than $2© in each case. 

Session Laws, 1887, Act xi. To 
Amend the Law Kelative to Sabbath- 
Breaking.— § 1. That no person who 
from religious belief liee|5§ aiiy otlier 
day than the first day of the week as the 
Sabbath shall be required to observe the 
first day of the week, usually called the 
Christian Sabbath, or shall be liable to 
the penalties enacted against Sabbath- 
breaking : 

Provided, That no §tore or 
saloon §lfiall l>e kept open or busi- 
ness carried on therein on the Christian 
Sabbath ; and, provided, further, that 
no person so observing any other day 
shall dl§tiirto any religious eongre- 
gation by his avocations or employ- 
ments. § 2. All laws and parts of laws 
in conflict herewith are hereby repealed 
and this act shall be in force from and 
after its passage. 

Decisions. — Offense of keepings 
open store door may be committed by 
leaving only partly open, or intention- 
ally unlocked, or by opening it to ad- 
mit one who knocks. Seelig v. State, 
43 Ark., 96. Poverty not the neces- 
sity that legalizes work on the Sabbath. 
20 Ark., 289. Horse hired for pleasure 
trip, damages recoverable, 31 Ark., 
518. The Circuit Court of U. S., 'iso- 
lated private contracts, made by par- 
ties outside of their ordinary calling, 
not invalidated," quoting Supreme Court 
of Tenn. (2 Yerg., 31), 21 Fed. Rep. 299. 
Contract made for the sale of land will 
bind if demands purchase money on 
weekdays. McKinney v. Demby, 44 
Ark., 74. 



California.— No Sabbath law. Sun- 
day mentioned only as a holiday and 
classed with Fourth of July. Sabbath 
law declared unconstitutional in 1858, 
9 Cal., 502. (Answered in Am. Law It., 
Sept.— Oct., 1884, p. 783.) Decision re- 
versed, 1861, 18 Cal., 678. Law repealed, 
1882. 



SABBATH LAWS OF COLORADO, 

Colorado. — General Statutes, § 211 S. 
Sec. 18. This chapter shall extend to 
and include all tlaeatrcs, cu-cuses and 
§hoiivs, where an admission fee is 

charged for entrance thereto. No per- 
son shall be allowed by virtue of any 
such license to open any place of public 
amusement^ such as a theatre, circus or 
show, on the Sabbath or Lord's Dsij ; 
but any person who shall so offend on 
such daj^ shall be fined in a sum not less 
than 850 nor more than $100, for every 
such offense. § 1635 (18), p. 585, G. L.— 
§ 18, p. 426, R. S. 

Criminal Code.— § 876. § 188 (159). 
Any person who shall hereafter know- 
ingly disturb the peace and good order 
of society, by labor or aiiiusement, 
on the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday (works of necessity and 
charity excepted), shall be fined, on con- 
viction thereof, in any sum not exceed- 
ing $i50. § 155, p. 230, R. S.— § 159, p. 
305, G. L.— Same as § 144, R. S. Ills., 
1855, except penalty. 

§ 877, § 189 (160). Whoever shall be 
guiltj^ of any noise, rout or amusement 
on the first day of the week, called Sun- 
day, whereby the peace of any private 
family may be disturbed, or who 
shall, by disorderly or immoral con- 
duct, interrupt or disturb the meet- 
ing, processions or ceremonies of anj^ 
religious denomination, on either a 
Sunday or week day, such person 
so offending shall be deemed guilty of a 
misdemeanor, and upon conviction 
thereof shall be fined in any sum not 
exceeding $50. § 145, R. S. Ills., 1845— 
§ 118, p. 315, Acts 1861— § 156, p. 230, R. 
S., amended by § 1, p. 100, Acts 1874— 
i^ 160, p. 305, G. L. 



Connecticut. — General Statutes, Sec. 
1570. EvfM'\' person who shall be pres- 
ent at aiiy eoneert of music, danc- 
ing, or other publie <iiversioii on 

Sunday, or on the evening thereof, shall 
be fined ^4. § 1572. No person who 
conscientiously beheves that the sev- 
enth day of the week ought to 



CONNECTICUT AND DELAWARE. 

be observed as the Sabbath, and actually 
refrains from secular business and labor 
on that day, shall be liable to prosecu- 
tion for performing secular business 
and labor on the Sabbath, provided he 
disturbs no otlier person while at- 
tending public worship. § 3097. Every 
person who by himself, his servant, or 
his agent, between the hours of twelve 
o'clock on Saturday night and twelve 
o'clock on Sunday night next following, 
shall sell or expose for sale any spirit- 
uous or intoxicating liquors, or shall 
keep open any place of any kind or 
description in which spirituous and 
intoxicating liquors are at any time sold 
or exposed for sale, or are reputed to be 
sold or exposed for sale, or in which any 
sports or g^aanes of elianee are at 
any time carried on or allowed, or are 
reputed to be so carried on or allowed, 
shall be fined not less than $50 nor more 
than $100, or be imprisoned not 
more than six months, or both ; but 
this section shall not apply to sales under 
a drugi^ist's license. § 3523. No rail- 
road company shall run any train on 
any road operated by it within this State, 
between sunrise and sunset on Sun- 
day, except from necessity or mercy ; 
provided, that before ten o'clock 
and thirty minutes in the forenoon 
and after three o'clock in the after- 
noon it may run trains carrying the 
United States mail, and such other 
trains or classes of trains as may be 
authorized by the Railroad Commis- 
sioners of this State, on application 
made to them on 'the ground that the 
same are required by the public neces- 
sity, or for the preservation of freight. 
§ 3524. No railroad company shall 
permit the handling, the loading, or 
the unloading of freight on any road 
operated by it, or at any of its depots or 
stations within this State, between sim- 
rise and sunset on Sunday, except from 
necessity or mercy.** [Amended 1889, 
Chap, xxiii, by adding:] Provided, liow- 
ever, that the Railroad Commissioners 



Add Colorado, 8:i9. Sec. 151. If any person shall be guilty of open lewdness, or other notorious act of 
public indecency, tending to d<,'banch the public morals, or shall keep open any tipplinj; or paming liouse 
on the Sabbath day or night, or shall maintain orkeep a lewd house or placo for the practice of fornication, 
or ehall keep a common, ill-governed and disorderly house, to the encouragement of idleness, traming. 
drinking, fornication or other misbehavior, every such person i^hall, on conviction, be tinLU not e::cceding 
one hundred dollars, or imprisoneJ in the county jail not exceeding six months. 



70 



of this State may suspend the operation 
of this section, so as to permit the hand- 
ling, the loading, or the unloading of 
freight by transfer of said freight l>e- 
t^veen steamboats and ears, until 
eight o'elock in the forenoon, at any 
depot or station where, upon applica- 
tion made to them, they shall find that 
the same is required by the public 
neeessity or for the preservation of 
freight. § 3525. Every railroad com- 
pany which shall violate any of the pro- 
visions of the two preceding sections shall 
forfeit to the State the sum of $250 
for any such violation. § 3526. No rail- 
road company shall transport passen- 
gers, on Sunday, upon any train deemed 
necessary according to the intent of 
§ 3523, for less than the highest 
regular fare collected on week days, 
and no commutation, special bargain, 
or season or mileage ticket shall include 
or provide for any travel on said day, 
under penalty of a forfeiture to the 
State of '$50 for each violation of 
this provision. § 3527. The provisions 
of the four preceding sections shall not 
effect statutes which prohibit secular 
work or recreation on Sunday, except so 
far as they may be found in their opera- 
tion to be inconsistent with them. 

Session Laws, 1889, Ch. CXXX. No 
person who receives a valuable con- 
sideration for a contract, express or 
implied, made on Sunday, shall defend 
any action upon such contract on the 
ground that it was so made, until he re- 
stores such consideration. 



Delaware.— Ch. 131, Sec. 4.— If any 
person shall perform any wordly em- 
ployment, lahoF, or business, on the 
Sabbath day, (works of necessity and 
charity excepted), he shall be fined 
^4, and on failure to pay such fine 
and costs, shall be imprisoned not 
exceeding twenty-four hours. If any 
carrier, peddler, wagoner, or driver 
of any public stagl^or carriage, or any 
carter, butcher or drover, with his 
horse, pack, wagon, stage, carriage, 
cart or drove, shall travel or drive 
upon the Sabbath day; or if any retailer 
of goods shall expose the same to 



sale on the Sabbalii, he shall be fined 
$§, and on failure to pay such fine and 
costs shall be imprisoned not exceeding 
twenty-four hours. Any justice of the 
peace may stop any such person so 
traveling on the Sabbath, and detain 
him until the next day. If any person 
shall be guilty of fishing, fowling, 
horse-racing, cock-fighting, or 
hunting game on the Sabbath day, he 
shall be fined ^4, and on failure to pay 
such fine and costs shall be imprisoned 
as aforesaid. If any number of persons 
shall assemble to game, play or 
dance on the Sabbath day, and shall 
engage or assist in such game, play or 
dance, every such person shall be fined 
$4, and on failure to pay such fine and 
costs shall be imprisoned as aforesaid. 
Any justice of the peace of the coun- 
ty shall have jurisdiction and cogni- 
zance of the offences mentioned in this 
section. § 13. If any person shall sell 
intoxicating liquors by any measure 
whatever on the Lord's Day, commonly 
called Sunday, such person shall be 
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and 
upon conviction thereof by indictment, 
shall for such offence be fined $20 
besides costs. The term "Lord's Day" 
or "Sunday," as used in this Act, 
shall be construed to embrace the space 
of time included between the hour of 
twelve o'clock of the night preced- 
ing, and the hour of twelve o'clock 
of the night succeeding the day com- 
monly called Sunday. § 14. It shall be 
unlawful for any person licensed to sell 
liquor as herein provided, to sell, give 
away or dispense of any liquor on the 
Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday ; 



and whosoever shall do so, shall be 
guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon 
conviction thereof, shall forfeit and 
pay a fine of not less than $50, nor 
more than $100, and in case of a 
second conviction of such misde- 
meanor, he shall forfeit his license, and 
shall not be capable of receiving a 
license for the space of two years there- 
after. 



SABBATH LAWS OF FLORIDA, 

District of Columbia. — No Sabbatli 
law. Proposed law, see page 15. 



Florida. — Sec. 9. — It shall not be 
lawful for any person to follow any 
pursuit, business or trade on the Sab- 
bath, the first day of the week, either 
by manual labor, or with animal or 
mechanical power, except the same be 
Avork of " necessity'," or justified by the 
accident or circumstances of the occa- 
sion. § 10. No merchant or shopkeeper 
or other person shall keep open 
store, or dispose of any wares, mer- 
chandise, goods or chattels on the 
Sabbath day, or sell or barter the same : 
Provided, That in cases of emer- 
gency or necessity they may dispose 
of the comforts and necessaries of 
life to customers without keeping open 
doors. § 11. Any violation of this law 
shall be deemed a misdemeanor, and 
any person convicted thereof shall be 
subject to a fine of not less than $20 
and not more than $50. § 12. If smy 
person on the Sabbath day shall employ 
his apprentice or servant in labor or 
other business, except it be in the ordi- 
nary household business of daily neces- 
sity, or other w^ork of necessity or 
charity, he shall forfeit and pay the 
sum of $10 for every such offense. 
§ 13. No merchant or shopkeeper or 
other person shall keep open store or 
dispose of any wares, merchandise, 
goods or chattels on the Sabbath da3', 
or sell or barter the same, upon pain 
that every person so offending shall 
forfeit and pay the sum of $20 for 
every such offence. § 14. It shall not 
be lawful for any person or persons 
within the State of Florida, to use fire- 
arms by hunting game or firing at tar- 
gets upon Sunday; and any violation of 
this section shall be deemed a misdo 
meanor, and the person or persons so 
offending shall, upon conviction thereof 
before any justice of the peace, be 



GEORGIA, ILLINOIS, INDIANA. 

punished by a fine of not less than $5 
nor more than ^25, or imprison- 
ment not exceeding twenty days. 



Georgia.— Sec. 3614, (3537), (3554). Sun- 
days and holidays shall in no case be in- 
cluded in the compntation of the 

time within which an appeal shall be 
entered (except that holidays are includ- 
ed in the computation in cases of appeals 
from Justices' Courts). 

[Decisions. — When Sunday not 
counted : 12 Ga., 93. Not so as to Sun- 
day in the thirty days which bills of ex- 
ceptions to be certified and signed by the 
Judge : 14 Ga., 122. Sunday not counted 
in the five days Sheriff allowed for serv- 
ing writs : 23 Ga. , 49. Advertisement 
of tax-sale in Sunday paper illegal, 
and sale thereunder passes no title. Saw- 
yer V. Corgile, 72 Ga., 290. If draft, 
accepted and delivered on Sunday, but 
dated day before, comes to hands of one 
who does not know the fact, he can en- 
force it. Harrison v. Powers, 76 Ga., 
218.] 

§ 3274, (3207), (3196). AttacEiments 
may issue and be levied on Sunday when 
the plaintiff, his agent, or attorney at 
law shall swear, in addition to the oath 
prescribed by this Code, that he has 
reason to apprehend the loss of the debt, 
unless process of attachment do issue on 
Sunday, and shall also comply with the 
other pi-ovisions of this Code in relation 
to issuing attachments. § 4535, (4461), 
(4420). Any person who shall be guilty 
of open lewdness, or any notorious 
act of public indecency tending to de- 
bauch tlie morals, or of keeping' open 
tippling houses on the Sabbath day or 
Sabbath night, shall, on conviction, be 
punished as prescribed in section 4310 of 
this Code.) [See below.] 

[Decisions.— Jury are to decide whether 
place was a tippling liouse, and kept open 
on Sunday : 19 Ga., 426. Plea of former 
conviction in tlio Citv Court of Atlanta 



72 



against the same charge in the Superior 
Court: 53 Ga., 448. Where part of a 
tippUng house used as a bedroom, yet 
the door must be kept closed on Sunday: 
65 G a,, 568. House where the " Albany 
Glee Club " met and drank on Sunday ; 
held a tippling house : 63 Ga., 319. 
Chief Justice Jackson, in decidingVvhat 
/*' constituted the opening of a liquor shop 
on Sunday, said (69 Ga., 54) : " The door 
on the street, through the bar and office 
room into the restaurant, was kept open 
to the extent that any visitor had only 
to push it and go in, and tipple in the 
restaurant. The counter where on other 
days drinking could be done, was cov- 
ered by canvas from the ceiling to the 
floor, so as to be invisible itself, and 
to conceal the bottles on shelves be- 
hind, and on it in brazen letters was 
the announcement 'bar closed,' and all 
the drinking was carried on in the rear 
and restaurant room. This fact, that the 
ostrich thus hid his head in the sand, and 
thereby imagined that his body was all 
covered too, is absolutely assigned as 
the legal reason why he was not visible 
to the keen eye of the law, which pene- 
trates and despises all subterfuge and 
deceit ! But one witness, though the 
canvas tried to hide the bird's head, 
actually did see poked out through a sort 
of aperture or window, the bill or beak 
which let out the liquor from the bar to 
servants in the restaurant. So that the 
foolish bird did not even keep all his 
head hid all the time ! It makes no 
difference in law whether the place be 
called a barroom or a glee club resort, 
or a parlor, or a restaurant, if it be a 
place where liquor is retailed and tip- 
pled on the Sabbath day, with a. door to 
get into it, so kept that anybody can push 
it open, and go in and drink, the pro- 
prietor of it is guilty of keeping open a 
tippling house on Sunday." — Alb. Law 
J., Oct. 18, 1884.] §4578, (4492), 
4450. If any Irelglit train shall 
be ran on any railroad in this State 
on the Sabbath day (known as Sunday), 
the superintendent of transportation of 
such railroad company, or the officer 
having charge of the business of that 
department of the railroad, shall be 



liable for indictment for a misdemeanor 
in each county through which such train 
shall pass, and, on conviction, shall be 
for each offense (punished as prescribed 
in section 4310 of this Code.) On such 
trial it shall not be necessary to allege 
or prove the names of any of the em- 
ployees engaged on such train, but the 
simple fact of the train being run. The 
defendant may justify himself by proof 
that such employees acted in direct vio- 
lation of the orders and rules of the de- 
fendant : provided always, that when- 
ever any train on any railroad in this 
State, having in such train one or more 
cars loaded with live stock, which 
train shall be cleSay©d beyond schedule 
time, shall not be required to lay over 
on the line of road or route during Sun- 
day, but may run on to the point where, 
by due course of shipment or consign- 
ment, the next stock-pen on the route 
may be, where said animals may be fed 
and watered, according to the facilities 
usually afforded for such transportation. 
And it shall be lawful for aSl freiglit 
traiii§ on the different railroads in this 
State, miiBiliig' over said roads on Sat- 
larclay iilglit, to run through to desti- 
nation : provided, the time of arrival,^ 
according to the schedule by which the 
train (i>r trains started on the trip, shall 
not be later than elg-lit ©'clock, oil 
§tiEiday moriiisig-. § 4579, (4493), 
(4451). Any tradesman, artificer, work- 
man or laborer, or other person what- 
ever, who shall pursue their t>u§me§§- 
or work of their ordinary callings, 
upon the Lord's Day (works of necessity 
or charity only excepted), shall be guilty 
of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, 
shall be (punished as prescribed in sec- 
tion 4310 of this Code.) § 4580. Any 
person or persons who shall liuiit any 
kind of game with gun or dogs, or both, 
on the Sabbath day, shall be guilty of a 
misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall 
be (punished as prescribed in section 
4310 of this Code.) § 4581, (4494). Any 
person who shall toatSa e in any stream 
or pond of water on the Sabbath day, 
in view of any road or passway, 
leading' to or from any house of relig- 
ious "worship shall be considered guilty 



i 



of a miscleir.eanor, and upon conviction 
thereof, shall be fined in a sum not ex- 
ceeding' $500, or iiiipriiiioiiiiieiit in 

the common jail of the county, at the dis- 
cretion of the court, not exceeding six 
months. § 4582, (4495), 4453. All moneys 
arising from iisies imposed for offenses, 
the gist of which consist in their being 
committed on the Sabbath day, shall be 
paid to the Ordinar\^ of the county, to be 
by him distributed for the purpose of 
establishing and promoting Sab- 
i>aitb-!!icliools in the county. 

§ 4310. Accessories after the fact, ex- 
cept where it is otherwise ordered in this 
Code, shall be punished bj^" a fine not to 
exceed $1,000, inipri§oiiineiit not to 
exceed six months, to work in the chain 
gang on the public works, "" * * not 
to exceed twelve months, and any one 
or more of these punishments may be 
ordered at the discretion of the Judere. 



Illinois.— Criminal Code, Ch. 38, §259. 
Whoever keeps open aiiytippliiii^ 

house, or place where liquor is sold or 
given awa}^ upon the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunday, shall be 
fined not exceeding $200. ^ 260. Sun- 
day shall include the time from mid- 
night to midnight. §2G1. Whoever 
disturbs the peace and good order of 
society by labor (works of necessity and 
charity excepted), or by any amuse- 
ment or diversion on Sunday, shall be 
fined not exceeding $25. This section 
shall not be construed to prevent Avater- 
men and railroad companies from 
landing their passengers, or watermen 
from loading and unloading- their car- 
goes, or ferrj'mcn from carrying over 
the water travelers and persons moving 
their families on the first day of the 
week nor to prevent the due exercise of 
the rights of conscience by whomever 
thinks proper to keep any other <lay 
as a Sabbath. § 2G2. Whoever shall 
be guilty of any noise, rout or anmse- 
ment on the first day of the week, called 
Sunday, whereby the peace of the pri- 
vate family may be disturbed, shall be 
fined not exceeding $25. (R. S., 1845, 
p. 177, 146.) Ch. 108, § 31. Facilities 
for attending religious services regu- 



larly on Sundays shall be afforded each 
conviet, so far as the same can be done 
judiciously, and upon-no pretext shall 
a convict on contract be required to 
labor on Sunday, nor shall any convict 
be required to do other than necessary 
labor for the State on that day. (2d L.,, 
1867, p, 31, 28.) 

Decisions. — Contracts permitted as 
"labor" and not "business" is pro- 
hibited, 107 111., 429. A judicial sentence 
delivered after midnight of Sat., void, 
3 Gilm., 368. Publishing legal notice 
which stands in place of a service of 
process, illegal, 40 111., 146. (Contra 
Wis.) Entering into recognizance by 
which prisoner was released on bail, il- 
legal. Entering into recognizance not 
such a judicial act as to render its exe- 
cution void either at common law or 
under statute. 31 111., 469. 



Idaho. — No Sabbath law, Sunday only 
named as legal holiday. 



Indiana. — § 2659. No person shall 
be arrested in any place of worship dur- 
ing service or on Sunday, except in cases 
specified by law, nor on the Fourth of 
July. § 920. An order of attaehment 
may be issued and executed on Sunday, 
if the plaintiff will show in his affidavit 
that the defendant is about to abscond 
on that day, to the injury of the plain- 
tiff. (163.) 

Criminal Code.— § 2000. Whoever^ 
being over fourteen years of age, is 
found on the first day of the week, com- 
monly called Sunday, rioting, hunt- 
ings, fishing, quarreling, at common 
labor, or engaged in his usual avo- 
cation (works of charity and necessity 
only excepted), shall be fined in any 
sum not more than $10 nor less than 
Si ; but nothing herein contained shall 
be construed to affect such as- conscien- 
tiously observe the seventh day of thc^ 
week as the Sabbath, travelers, faR> 
ilies removing, keepers of toll-bridges 
and toll-gates, and ferrymen, acting- 
as sucli. § 1594. Prosecutions for tlicr 
desecration of the Sabbath day must be 
commenced witliin six months after 
the commission of the oflense. ^ 684 



74 



An execution may be issued and 
executed on Sunday, whenever an affi- 
davit shall be filed by the plaintiff, or 
some person in his behalf, stating- that 
lie will lose his judgment, as he has 
reason to fear and believe, unless process 
issue on that day.. (417.) § 788. Every 
execution shall be returned forthwith, 
upon being- satisfied by the collection of 
the money ; also, upon order of the plain- 
tiff of his ag-ent indorsed thereon. When 
the return-day of an execution falls on 
Sunday, it shall be returned on the fol- 
lowing Monday. (486.) 

[Decisions.— That injury for which a 
brakeman sues company employing him 
was received on Sunday does not pre- 
clude recovery although unlawful to la- 
bor, Louisville, New Albany, etc., Ry. 
Co. V. Frawley, 110 Ind., 18. Cutting of 
^wheat " dead ripe," or marketing " dead 
ripe" melons, which would have been 
injured if left till Monday, necessity, 
€7 Ind., 595; 59 Ind., 416. Hauling feed 
ior pigs per., 67 Ind., 588, As law au- 
thorizes manufacture of beer, lawful to 
turn barley on Sunday, as otherwise it 
would spoil, 33 Ind., 416. Sheriff's no- 
tice of sale in Sunday paper not valid 
notice, 87 Ind., 158. (Cf. 111. and Wis.) 
Insurance policy issued and premium 
note taken by agent on Sunday, but 
iDoth dated ahead, void, 37 Ind., 379. 
See also Am. Rep. 26:84; 30:197; 35:205. 
Ptopairing R. R. switch, necessity, 79 
Ind., 893.] 

§ 1129. — Any writ or process author- 
ized by this Article may be issued and 
served, in cases of emergency, on Sun- 
day. (735.) 

(Criminal Code.) § 2098.— Whoever 
shall sell, barter or give away to be 
drunk as a beverage, any spirituous, 
vinous, malt or other intoxicating 
liquor upon Sunday, the fourth day of 
July, the first day of January, the 
twenty-fifth day of December (com- 
monly called Christmas day), Thanks- 
giving day as designated by proclama- 
tion of the Governor of this State, or 
the President of the United States, or 
any legal holiday, or upon the day of 
any election in the township, town or 
<2ity where the same may be holden, or 



between the hours of eleven o'clock P. M. 
and five o'clock A. M., shall be fined 
in any sum not more than $50 nor less 
than $10, to which may be added im- 
prisonment in the county jail not 
more than sixty days nor less than ten 
days. 

§ 1454. — Process may be issued on 
Sunday, whenever it shall appear by 
affidavit that the object of such process 
would probably be defeated by delaying. 

§ 1715. — No recognizance, under- 
taking, or bond taken in any criminal 
proceeding shall be void for want of 
form or of substance, or for omission of 
any recital or condition, or because the 
same was entered into on Sunday ; nor 
shall the principal or surety be dis- 
charged, but the principal and surety 
shall be bound by such recognizance, 
undertaking, or bond to the full extent 
contemplated by the law requiring the 
same, and the sureties to the amount 
specified in such recognizance, under- 
taking, or bond. And no action upon 
such recognizance, undertaking or bond 
shall be defeated for any want of form 
or substance, or for the omission of any 
recital or condition, or because the same 
was entered into on Sunday, etc. 

[Decision. — A recognizance executed 
on Sunday, all the prior proceedings 
having occurred on the same day is 
good. State v. Douglass, 69 Ind., 544.] 

§ 1280.— The time within which an 
act is to be done, as herein provided, 
shall be computed by excluding the 
first day and including the last. If the 
last day be Sunday, it shall be excluded. 
(787.) 

Session Laws, 1885, Ch. xxxvi., § 1. 
It shall be unlawful for any person or 
persons to engage in playing any game 
of baseball where any fee is charged, 
or where any reward or prize, or profit, 
or article of value is depending upon 
the result of such game on the first day 
of the week, commonly called Sunday, 
and every person so offending shall be 
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and 
upon conviction shall be fined in any 
sum not exceeding $25. 

Indian Territory.— Several of the 
Indian tribes have good Sabbath laws. 



SABBATH LAWS, IOWA, KANSAS, LOUISIANA, KENTUCKY. 

Iowa. — §191. — No court can be fight, or liuiitiug', shooting, carrying- 



opened, nor any judicial business trans- 
acted on Sunday, except : 1. To give in- 
structions to a jury then deliberating on 
their verdict. 2. To receive a verdict, or 
discharge a jury. 3. To exercise the 
powers of a single magistrate in a crim- 
inal proceeding. 4. And such other 
iicts as are provided by law. 

[Decision.— In order to avoid a judg- 
ment, regular on its face, on the ground 
that it was rendered after midnight on 
Saturday, the evidence should establish 
beyond the doubt naturally arising from 
the difficulty of determining the precise 
time of a particular transaction, that it 
was thus rendered. Bishop v. Carter, ef 
al., Iowa, 165.] 

§ 2607.— Notice shall not be served on 
Sunda3% unless the plaintiff, his agent 
or attorne}^ make oath there that per- 
sonal service will not be possible unless 
then made, and notice indorsed with 
such affidavit shall be served by the 
sheriff, or may be served by another, as 
on a secular day. §2952. — Where the 
petition states, in addition to the other 
facts required, tliattlie plaintiff will lose 
his claim unless the attacliiiieiit issues 
and is served on Sunday, it may be 
issued and served on that day. §3028. 
An execution may be issued and exe- 
tcuted on Sunday, whenever an affidavi 
shall be filed by the plaintiff or some 
person in his behalf, stating that he be- 
lieves he will lose his judgment unless 
process issue on that day. % 3227. If the 
plaintiff allege in his petition that he 
will lose his property unless process 
issue on Sunday, the order may be 
issued and served on that day. § 3424. 
The warrant may be issued on Sun- 
day, if the plaintiff, his agent or at- 
torney, shall state in his petition and 
swear thereto, that it would be unsafe 
to delay proceedings till Monday. §4072. 
If any pei*son be found on the first day 
of the week, commonly called Sabbath, 
engaged in riot, fi^liSsn;;, or offering to 



fire arms, fisliin^, horse racings, 
dancing', or in unj manner disturb- 
ing' any worshiping assembly or private 
family ; or in buying or selling prop- 
erty of any kind, or in any labor, the 
work of necessity and charity only ex- 
cepted, every person so offending shall, 
on conviction, be fined in a sum not more 
than ^5, nor less than $l,to be recovered 
before any justice of the peace in the 
county where such offense is committed, 
and shall be commited to the jail of said 
county until said fine, together with the 
costs of prosecution shall be paid; but 
nothing herein contained shall be con- 
strued to extend to those who conscien- 
tiously observe the seventli day of 
the week as the Sabbath, or so prevent 
persons traveling, or families emi- 
grating from pursuing their journey, 
or keepers of toll bridges, toll gates, 
and ferrysnen from attending the 
same. 

Decisions. — The courts of this State 
will not enforce an express or implied 
contract for the sale of property 
made on the Sabbath day, where parties 
thereto do not come within the excep- 
tions expressed in section 4072 of the 
code. Pike v. King, 16 Iowa, 49 ; Sayre 
V. Wheeler, 32 Id., 559; Sayre v. 
Wheeler, 31 Id., 112; Clough v. Gog- 
gins, 46 Id., 325. And the same rules 
applies to a contract made in another 
State, in the absence of evidence that the 
contract was valid under the laws of the 
State where made. Sayre v. Wheeler, 
31 Id., 559. A contract made in viola- 
tion of a statute and against the policy 
of the State, malum in se or malum 
proTiibitum is invalid, and cannot be 
enforced by action. Id. A contract 
void because made on Sunday, does not 
pi-event the parties from making a valid 
contract with I'cference to the same sub- 
ject matter on a subsecjuent week day ; 
nor, it would seem, from otherwise 
rati Tying th(i original contract. liar- 



76 



rison v. Colton, 32 Id., 16. A note 
signed on Sundaj^, but delivered on 
Monday, may be valid, Bell v. Mahin, 
69 Iowa, 408. Where a promissory 
note is void because executed on Sunday, 
the payee is precluded from recovering- 
upon the original contract v^hich was 
the consideration for the note. Sayre v. 
Wheeler, 31 Id,, 112. A written con- 
tract for the conveyance of land made on 
Sunday, but bearing the date of another 
day of the week, when transferred, will 
be enforced in the hands of the trans- 
feree in good faith and without notice 
of the infirmity. Jones v. Bailey et al., 
45 Id., 241. A contract for an exchange 
of horses made on Saturday which in- 
cluded the discharge of debt due from 
one of the parties to the other, but the 
plaintiff took possession of the horse he 
traded for on Sunday. Held, that there 
was such a consummation of the con- 
tract on Saturday as rendered it valid. 
Peake v, Conlan, 43 Id., 297. In an ac- 
tion for damages for injuries sus- 
tained by the plaintiff as the result of 
the frightening of his horse on the high- 
way by the defendant's dogs, it was held, 
that the plaintiff's right to recover was 
not affected by the fact that the acci- 
dent occurred on Sunday while he was 
riding on a business errand. Schmidt v. 
Humphrey, 43 Id., 652. A promissory 
note actually made on Sunday, but 
dated on a week day, is valid in the 
hands of a bona fide purchaser for value 
before maturity. The Clinton National 
Bank v. Graves et al., 48 Id., 228. An 
admission that a debt is unpaid, con- 
tained in a letter written on Sunday, is 
sufficient to remove the bar of the 
statute of limitations, and the letter is 
admissible as evidence for that purpose. 
Ayres v. Bane, 39 Id., 518. A railroad 
company incurs no other liability for 
running trains on Sunday than the fine 
provided by this section. The liability for 
killing stock by a train run on that day 
is to be determined by the same rules as 
if done on a secular day. Gingie v. The 
C. B. & Q. R'y Co., 60 Id., 333. 



competed by excluding the first day 
and including the last ; if the last day be 
Sunday, it shall be excluded. 

Session Laws, 1886. Chap. CII. — § 1. 
Every person who shall engage in 
Iaas2fi0iig or shooting on the first day 
of the week, commonly called Sunday, 
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemean- 
or, and upon conviction be fined in a sum 
not less than $5, nor more than $20. 

Ch. 31. (2116) § 255. Every person who 
shall either Isat>OF himself , or compel his 
apprentice, servant or any other person 
under his charge or control, to labor or 
perform any work other than the house- 
hold offices of daily necessity, or other 
works of necessity or charity, on the 
first day of the week commonly called 
Sunday, shall be deemed guilty of a 
misdemeanor, and fined not exceeding 
$'25. [Decisions: Kas. 5, 29.— 29Kas., 
663.]— (2117) §256. The last section shall 
not extend to any person who is a mem- 
ber of a religious society, by whom 
any ©tlief tliasi tlie first day ©f 
tiie ^wcek is observed as a Sabbath, 
so that he observes such Sabbath, nor to 
prohibit a terryiisaii from crossing* 
passengers on any day in the week. 
(2118) § 257. Every person who shall be 
convicted of la®r§e racing, cock 
figiitiiig or playing at cards, or games 
of any kind, on the first day of the week, 
commonly called Sunday, shall be 
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and 
fined not exceeding $50. (2119) §258. 
Every person who shall expose to 
sale any goods, wares or merchandise, 
or shall Keep open any ale or poiter 
house, grocery or tippling shop, or 
shall sell or retail any fermented or dis- 
tilled liquor, on the first day of the week, 
commonly called Sunday, shall, on con- 
viction, be adj iidged guilty of a misde- 
meanor, and fined not exceeding $50. 
(2120) § 259. Exceptions. The last sec- 
tion shall not be construed to prevent 
the sale of any drug's or medicines, 
provisions or other articAes of 
immediate necessity. 



Kansas.— § 722. The time within 
which an act is to be done, shall be 



Kentucky. — Ch. 21, §9. If any pro- 
ceeding is directed by law to take place, 
or any act is directed to be done, on a. 



77 



particLilar clay of a month, if that day 
happen to be Sunday, the proceeding- 
shall take place, or the act shall be done, 
on the next day. Ch. 100, §12. No 
process or notice on which any legal 
proceedings are to be founded, except as 
herein provided, shall be executed on 
Sunday, the execution of either on that 
day shall be void. But a writ of habeas 
corpus, or process on a charge of trea- 
son, felonj^ or for a riot or breach of 
the peace, or upon an escape out of cus- 
todj^ may be executed on Sunday. Ch. 
29, § 10. No -worSi or business shall 
be done on the Sabbath daj^ except the 
ordinary household offices, or other work 
of necessity or cliarit}^ If any person on 
the Sabbath day shall himself be found 
at his own or any other trade or calling, 
or shall employ his apprentices, or other 
person, in labor or other business, 
whether the same be for pi'ofit or amuse- 
ment, unless such as is permitted above, 
he shall be fined not less than $2 nor 
more than $50, for each offense. Every 
person or apprentice so emploj^ed shall 
be deemed a separate offense. Persons 
who are members of a religious society. 
who observe as a Sabbath any oSlier 
day in the week than Sunday, shall not 
be liable to the penalty prescribed in 
this section, if they observe as a Sabbath 
one day in each seven, herein provided. 
It shall be unlawful for any tavern 
keeper (whether licensed by the State or 
by authority of the county court or trus- 
tees or other authorit}^ of city or town), 
or for any saloon keeper, or any other 
dealer in spirituous, vinous or malt 
liquors, to have open a bar room or 
other place for the sale of such liquors, 
or in any way to sell, give, or otlierwise 
dispose of spirituous, vinous or malt 
liquors on Sunday. The keeping open 
of a bar or store, or any other place, for 
the sale of such liquors, or the selling or 
otherwise disposing of such liquors on 
Sunday, shall be deemed a violation of 
the statute, and shall upon conviction, 
subject the offender to the pains and 
penalties prescribed therein, and shall, 
moreover, for the tliird oirense, for- 
feit his license, whether State, city, 
count V coui-t or town license. 



Ch. 29, § 11. If any person shall Iinnt 
game with a gun or dogs on the Sab- 
bath, he shalt be fined not less than $5, 
nor more than ^50 for each offense. 

Ch. 47, § 21. That no g^ame shall be 
permitted to be played on such [billiard 
and pool] tables on the Sabbath day, 
under the penalty of an absolute for- 
feitnr© of tlie license. 

Ch. 92, § 21. No spirituous liquors shall 
be kept or sold in any room where a 
billiard, pigeon hole, or pool table is 
kept, nor shall any game be played on 
such table on Sunday. Upon convic- 
tion for a violation of either of the pro- 
visions of this section, the ofl'ender shall 
be fined ^60 for each offense, the 
license shall be forfeited, and no license 
shall thereafter be granted to the person 
or persons so offending. 

Ch. 91. Art. II. That the provisions of 
the General Statutes regarding the ob- 
servance of Sunday shall not apply 
to street railway companies. 

Act of 1880. Prosecutions for profane 
swearing, cursing or being drunk, or 
Sabbath breaking', and against survey- 
ors of public roads, shall be commenced 
within six monttis after the offense is 
committed, and not after. 

Decisions. — The running by a rail- 
roacl company of passengers or freight 
trains is a work of necessity. — Com- 
monwealth V. L. & N. P. P. Company, 
80 Ky., 197. Contracts made upon 
Sunday should be held an exception, in 
some sense, from the general class of 
contracts which are void for illegality. 
That they have grown out of a transac- 
tion upon Sunday is not sufficient to 
avoid them : they must be finally closed 
upon that day, and although then closed, 
yet, if affirmed upon a subsequent day, 
they become valid. Campbell v. Young, 
9 Bush, 240. 



Louisiana.— Acts of 1886. No. 18, §1. 
That from and after the 31st day of 
December, A. D. 1886, all stores, sliops, 
saloons, and all places of public business 
which are or may be licensed under the 
law of the State of Louisiana, or under 
any parochial or nmnicipal law or ordi- 



78 



nance, and all plantation stores, are 
hereby required to be closed at 
t^i^elve o'clock on Saturday 
iiig-fits, and to remain closed con- 
tinuously for twenty-four (24) lioiirs, 
during- which period of time it shall 
be lawful for the proprietors thereof to 
g-ive, trade, barter, exchange or sell 
any of the stock or any article of mer- 
chandise kept in any such establishment. 
§ 2. That whosoever shall violate the 
provisions of this act, for each offense 
shall be deemed guilty of a misde- 
meanor, and on trial and conviction, 
shall pay a fine of not less than $35, 
nor more than ^250, or be imprisoned 
for not less than ten days nor more 
than thirty days, or both, at the dis- 
cretion of the court. Provisions of 
this act shall not apply to news- 
dealers, keepers of soda foun- 
tains, places of resort for recre- 
ation and health, \i^atering 
places and public parks, nor 
prcTcnt the sale of ice. § 3. That 
the provisions of this act shall not apply 
to newspaper oflSces, printing 
offices, book stores, drug stores, 
apothecary shops, undertaker 
shops, public and private mar- 
kets, bakeries, dairies, livery 
stables, railroads whether steam 
or horse, hotels, boarding 
houses, steamboats and other 
vessels, w^arehouses for receiv- 
ing and forivarding freights, res- 
taurants, telegraph offices and 
theatres, or any place of amuse- 
ment, providing no intoxicating 
liquors are sold on the premises ; pro- 
vided, that stores may be opened for 
the purpose of selling anything neces- 
sary in sickness and for burial pur- 
poses; provided, that nothing in this 
act shall be construed so as to allow 
hotels or boarding houses to sell or 
dispose of alcoholic liquors, except 
wine for table use on Sundays ; 
and provided, further, that no alcoholic, 
vinous or malt liquors shall be given, 
traded or bartered or sold or delivered in 
any public place on said day, except 
when actually administered or pre- 
scribed by a practicing physician in the 
discharge of his professional duties 



in case of sickness ; in such case the 
physicians administering the intoxi- 
cating liquors may charge therefor. § 4. 
That all laws or parts of laws contrary to 
or inconsistent with the provisions here- 
of, be and the same are hereby repealed. 
Decisions. — Shreveport made law to 
close places of business on Sundays at & 
A. M., except drug stores, hotels, barber 
shops, restaurants, livery stables, and 
places of those who keep Saturday. A 
man fined $10 under this law appealed 
to the highest courts, and the following 
decision was given : '' Before the Con- 
stitution Jews and Gentiles are equal ; 
by the law they must be treated alike, 
and the ordinance which gives to one 
sect a privilege which it denies to 
another, violates both the Constitution 
and the law, and is, therefore, both null 
and void." 26 La. Ann., 671. (Contra, 
Cal., Iowa, Mass., Mo., N. Y., N. C, 
Ohio, Penn., S. C.) An ordinance regu- 
lating the conduct of citizens on Sunday 
is only sustainable under the Constitu- 
tion as a police regulation. (Minden v. 
Silverstein, 36 La. Ann., 912.) La. Acts, 
1886, No. 18, known as the Sunday law, 
and which requires the closing of all 
places of business, except certain desig- 
nated classes, from midnight of Satur- 
day to midnight of Sunday, is a valid 
exercise of the police power, and is not 
within the inhibition of the fourteenth 
amendment to the Federal Constitution, 
nor of the provision of the State Con- 
stitution which guarantees the protec- 
tion of property and of the laws. " The 
statute is to be judged precisely as if if 
had selected for the day of rest any day 
of the week other than Sunday, and its 
validity is not to be questioned because, 
in the exercise of a wise discretion, it 
has chosen that day which the majority 
of the inhabitants of the State, under 
the sanction of their religious faith, 
already observe as a day of rest." (State 
V. Orleans Judge, 39 La. Ann., 132.) The 
Act aforesaid requires all "stores, shops^ 
groceries, saloons," etc., to be closed, 
but declares that its provisions shall not 
apply to " public markets." Held, that 
a grocery in a public market may not be 
kept open. [Fenner, J., dissenting.] 
(State V. Fernandez, 39 La. Ann., 538.) 



SABBATH LAWS OF MAINE AND MARYLAND. 



Maine. — § 27. Sunday is a close time, 
on which it is not la^vfiil to limit, 

kill or destroy game or birds of any 
kind, under the penalties imposed there- 
for during other close times ; but the 
penalties already imposed for violation 
of the Sunday laws are not repealed or 
diminished. §81. No person shall serve 
or execute any process on. the Lord's 
Day ; but such service is void, and the 
person executing it is liable in damages 
to the party aggrieved, as if he had no 
process. § 115. No deed, contract, re- 
ceipt or other instrument in writing is 
void because dated on the Lord's Day, 
without other proof than the date of its 
having been made and delivered on that 
day. § 116. No person who receives a 
valuable consideration for a contract, 
express or implied, made on the Lord's 
Da3% shall defend any action upon such 
contract on the ground that it w^as made 
until he restores such consideration. 
§ 17. Whoever, on the Lord's Day, or at 
any other time, behaves rudely or in- 
decently within the walls of any house 
of public worship, wilfully interrupts or 
disturbs any assembly for religious 
worship within the place of such assem- 
bly or out of it; sells, or exposes for 
sale, within one mile thereof, and during 
the time of their meeting, intoxicating 
liquors, refreshments or merchandise, 
except in his usual course and place of 
business ; exhibits any show or play ; 
engages or aids in any horse race, 
gambling or other sport, to the disturb- 
ance of such assembly ; or, coming 
within their neighborhood, refuses, on 
request, either immediately and peace- 
ably to retire beyond their hearing, or to 
conform to tlieir established regulations, 
shall be punislied by iiiiprisonincnt 
for not more tlian thirty days, and by 
fine not exceeding J^IO. § 20. Who- 
ever, on the Lord's Day, keeps open his 
shop, workhouse, warehouse or place of 
business, travels, or does any work, 
labor or business on that day, ex- 



cept works of necessity or charity ; uses 
any sport, game or recreation ; or is^ 
present at any dancing, public diversioii, 
show or entertainment, encouraging th.i 
same, shall be punished by fine not ex- 
ceeding ten dollars. § 21. If an inii- 
liolder or victualer, on the Lord's 
Day, suffer any persons, except travel- 
ers, strangers or lodgers, to abide in his. 
house, yard or field, drinking or spend- 
ing their time idly, at play or doing any 
secular business, except works of charity 
or necessity, he shall be punished by 
fine not exceeding ^4 for each person 
thus suffered to abide ; and if, after con- 
viction, he is ag'ain .guilty, by fine not 
exceeding $10 for each offense ; and 
upon a tliird conviction, he shall 
also be incapable of holding any li- 
cense ; and every person so abiding 
shall be fined not exceecling $4 for 
each offense. § 22. The Lord's Day 
includes the time between twelve 
o'clock on Saturday night and 
twelve o'clock on Sunday night. 

Decision.— Statute which provides 
that no person shall defend action on 
contract upon ground that it was made 
on the Lord's Day, ftntil he restores con- 
sideration received for contract, applies 
to action in which defendant is sued for 
sum which he promised to pay as differ- 
ence of value between horses exchanged 
by parties, defendant not having offered 
to restore the horse. 79 Me., 156. 



Maryland.— § 247. No person what- 
soever shall work or do any bodily 
labor on the Lord's Day, commonly 
called Sunday ; and no person having 
children or servants shall command, or 
wittingly or willingly suffer any of tliem 
to do any manner of work or labor on 
the Lord's Day (works of necessity and 
charity always excepted), nor shall 
suffer or permit any children or servants 
to profane the Lord's Day by gaming, 
fisliin;;, fowling, liunting^ or unlawful 
pastime or recreation ; and every 



80 



person transgressing- this section, and 
being thereof convicted before a justice 
of the peace, shall forfeit $5, to be 
applied to the use of the county. § 248. 
No person in this State shall sell, 
dispose of, barter, or if a dealer in any- 
one or more of the articles of merchan- 
dise in this section mentioned, shall give 
away on the Sabbath day, commonly 
called Sunday, any tobacco, cigars, 
candy, soda or mineral w^aters, spirit- 
uous or fermented liquors, cordials, 
lager beer, w^ine, cider or any other 
^oods, wares or merchandise what- 
soever ; and any person violating any 
one of the provisions of this section 
shall be liable to indictment in any 
court in this State having criminal 
jurisdiction, and upon conviction there- 
of, shall be fined a sum not less 
than $20 nor more than ^50, in the 
discretion of the court, for the 
first offense, and if convicted a 
i^econd time for a violation of 
of this section, the person or persons, so 
offending sifall be fined a sum not less 
than $50 nor more than ^500, and be 
imprisoned for not less than ten nor more 
than thirty days, in the discretion of 
the court, and his, her or their license, 
if any were issued, shall be declared null 
and void by the judge of said court ; 
and it shall not be lawful for such person 
or persons to obtain another license for 
the period of twelve inontlis from the 
time of such conviction, nor shall a 
license be obtained by any other person 
or persons to carry on said business on 
the premises or elsewhere, if the person, 
so as aforesaid convicted, has any inter- 
est whatever therein, or shall derive any 
profit whatever therefrom ; and in case 
of being convicted more tliaii 
twice for a violation of this section, 
such person or persons on each occasion 
shall be imprisoned for not less than 
thirty nor more than sixty days, and 
fined a sum not less than douIt>le that 
imposed on such person or persons on 
the last preceding conviction ; and his, 
her or their license, if any were issued, 
shall be declared null and void by the 
court, and no new license shall be 
issued to such person or persons for a 



period of two years from the time of 
such conviction, nor to any one else to 
carry on said business wherein he or she 
is in anywise interested, as before pro- 
vided for the second violation of the 
provisions of this section. One half of 
all the fines to be imposed under this 
section shall be paid to the State, and 
the other IiaSf to tlie informer. 
This section is not to apply to milk or 
ice dealers in supplying their custo- 
mers, or to apothecaries when put- 
ting up hona fide prescriptions. § 249. 
It shall not be lawful to keep open or use 
any dancin,^ saloon-, opera liouse^ 
ten pin alley, l>arl>er saloon or 
ball alley within this State on the Sab- 
bath day, commonly called Sunday ; and 
any person or persons, or toody politic 
or corporate, who shall violate any 
provisions of this section, or cause or 
knowingly permit the same to be vio- 
lated by a person or persons in his, her 
"or its employ, shall be liable to indict- 
ment in any court of this State 
having criminal jurisdiction, and upon 
conviction thereof, shall be fined a sum 
not less than $50 nor more than $100, 
in the discretion of the court, for 
the first offense ; and if convicted 
a second time for a violation of this 
section, the person or persons, or body 
politic or corporate shall be fined a sum 
not less than $100 nor more than $500; 
and if a natural person, shall be im- 
prisoned not less than ten nor more 
than thirty days, in the discretion of the 
court ; and in case of any conviction 
subsequent to tlie second fined, 
double or imprisoned, etc. All 
fines to be imposed under this section 
shall be paid to the State. § 22. It shall 
be unlawful for any person to take or 
catch oysters on Sunday or at night ; 
and any person violating this section 
shall, on conviction thereof, be fined a 
sum of not less than $50 dollars nor more 
than $300, or sentenced to the house 
of correction for a period of not less than 
one year, or forfeit tlie boat, vessel 
or canoe used in violation of this section, 
at the discretion of the judge or justice 
of the peace trying- the case. 



SABBATH LAWS OF 

Massachusetts.— Ch. 98, § 1. Who- 
ever is preseat at a game, sport, play 
or public diversion, except a concert of 
sacred mui^ic, upon the evening of 
the Lord's Day, unless such game, sport, 
play or public diversion is licensed 
by the person or board authorized by 
law to grant licenses in such cases, 
shall be punished by fme not exceeding 
$5 for each offense. §2. Whoever on 
the Lord's Day keeps open his shop, 
warehouse or workhouse, or does uny 
manner of labor, business or work, 
except works of necessity and charity, 
or takes part in any sport, game or 
play, or, except as allowed or prohib- 
ited in the preceding section, is present 
at any dancing or public diversion, 
show, game or entertainment shall be 
punished by fme not exceeding $50, 
hut nothing in this section shall be 
held to prohibit the manufacture and 
distribution of steam, gas or electricity 
lor illuminating purposes, heat or 
motive power, nor the distribution of 
water for fire or domestic purposes, 
nor the use of the telegraph or the 
telephone, nor the retail sale of 
drugs and medicines, nor articles 
ordered by the prescription of a physi- 
cian, nor mechanical appliances used by 
physicians or surgeons, nor the letting 
of horses and carriagcs,nor the letting 
of yachts and boats, nor the running 
of steam ferryboats on established 
routes, of street railway cars, nor the 
preparation, printing and publishing of 
newspapers, nor the sale and delivery 
of newspapers, nor the retail sale and 
delivery of niiili, nor the transportation 
of milk, nor the making of butter and 
cheese, nor the keeping open of public 
bath houses, nor the making or sell- 
ing by bakers or their employees of 
bread or other food usually dealt in by 
them before ten of the clock in the 
morning and between the hours of four 
of the clock and half-past six of lli(i 
clock in the evening. § 4. Whoever, 
keeping a house, shop, cellar or 
place of public entertainment or 



MASSACHUSETTS. 

refreshment, entertains therein on the 
Lord's Day any persons other than 
travelers, strangers or lodgers, or suf- 
fers such persons on said day to abide 
or remain therein, or in the yards, 
orchards or fields appertaining to the 
same, drinking or spending their time 
idly or at play or in doing any secular 
business, shall be punished by fine not 
exceeding $50 for each person so en- 
tertained or suffered to abide or re- 
main ; and upon any conviction 
after the first, by fine not exceeding 
$100, and if convicted three times 
he shall thereafter be incapable of 
holding a license. § 5. No person 
licensed to keep a place of public enter- 
tainment shall entertain or suffer to 
remain or be in his house, yard or other 
places appurtenant, any persons other 
than travelers, strangers or lodgers in 
such house, drinking and spending their 
time there, on the Lord's Day, 

and every 
such innholder or other person so offend- 
ing shall be punished by fine not ex- 
ceeding $5 for each offense. §6. No 
person shall serve or execute any civil 
process on the Lord's Day ; but such 
service shall be void and the person 
serving or executing such process shall 
be liable in damages to the party ag- 
grieved in like manner as if he had no 
such process. § 7. Whoever on the 
Lord's Day behaves rudely or in- 
decently within the walls of any house 
of public worship shall be punished by 
fine not exceeding $10. § 10. Whoever 
on the Lord's Day discharges any fire- 
arm for sport or in the pursuit of game 
shall be punished by fine not exceeding 
$10, § 11. Whoever attempts to take 
9r catch any fish on the Lord's Day, by 
using any hook, line, net, spear or other 
implement, shall be punished by fine 
not exceeding $10. § 13. All prosecu- 
tions under the two preceding sections 
shall be instituted williin thirty 
days from the time flie offense was 
committed. § 13. Whoever conscieh- 
tiously believes that the seventh day 



Conditions of liquor licences forbid saloH on Lord's day, except by hotels to guests, and also forbid th 
hiding by screens of the interior of licensed premises. 



of the week ought to be observed as the 
Sabbath, and actually refrains from sec- 
ular business and labor on that day, 
shall not be liable to the penalties of this 
chapter for performing secular business 
or labor on the Lord's Day, if he clt§- 
tiirS>§ no other person. § 14. Any inn- 
holder, common victualler, or person 
keeping or suffering to be kept in any 
place occupied by him, implements such 
as are used in gaming", in order that the 
same may for hire, gain or reward be used 
for purposes of amusement, who on the 
Lord's Day uses or suffers to be used any 
implement, of that kind upon any part of 
his premises, shall for the first offense 
forfeit a sum not exceeding $100 ©r be 
imprI§onecl in the house of correction 
not exceeding three months ; and for 
every siito§e«iiieBit offeii§e shall be 
imprisoned in the house of correction 
for a term not exceeding one year, 
and in either case shall further recog- 
nize, with sufficient sureties, in a reason- 
able sum for his good behavior, and es- 
pecially that he will not be guilty of any 
offense against the provisions of this 
section for the space of three months 
then next ensuing. 

§ 15. The Board of Railroad Commis- 
sioners may aiitliorize the running of 
such steamboat lines and, upon any rail- 
road, of such trains on the Lord's 
Day as, in the opinion of the Board, the 
public necessity and convenience 
may require, having regard to the due 
observance of the day. § 16 The Lord's 
Day shall be deemed to include the time 
from miclniglit to midniglit. 

(Constables.) § 120. They shall take 
due notice of and prosecute all viola- 
tions of the laws respecting the 
observance of the Lord's Day. § 97. 
Whoever wilfully commits a trespasiS 
by entering upon the orchard, garden, 
or other improved land of another 
without permission of the owner * * 
if offense is committed on the Lord's 
Day, the imprisonment shall not be 
legs than five days nor the fine less 
than $5. § 99. Whoever between the 
first day of April and the first day of 
December willfully enters on or passes 
over or remains on any orchard, garden, 



-X- * * after being forbidden by the 
owner * * * shall be punished by 
fine not exceeding $20 ; and such fine 
shall not be less than $5 if the offense 
is committed on the Lord's Day. 
§ 100. A person found in the act of com- 
mitting the trespass described in the 
preceding section may by arrested by a^ 
sheriff, deputy sheriff, constable, watch- 
man, or police officer, and kept in cus- 
tody in a convenient place, not more 
than twenty-four hours, Sunday ex- 
cepted, until a complaint can be made 
against him for the offense, and he be 
taken upon a warrant issued upon such 
complaint. §104. Whoever is disco vered^ 
in the act of wilfully injuring a fruit or 
forest tree or committing any kind of 
malicious mischief on the Lord's Day 
may be arrested by a sheriff, deputy 
sheriff, constable, watchman, police offi- 
cer, or other person, and lawfully de- 
tained by imprisonment in the jail or oth- 
erwise until a complaint can be made 
against him for the offense, and he be 
taken upon a warrant issued upon such 
complaint; but such detention without 
warrant shall not continue more than- 
twenty-four hours. 

(Arrest, etc.) § 52. Persons committed 
to jail on the Lord's Day, or on the even- 
ing or afternoon preceding may be ad- 
mitted to bail on that day, when in the 
opinion of the magistrate an application 
for that purpose appears to be proper. 

(Discharge of convicts, etc.) §24. 
When the term of imprisonment of a 
convict in any prison expires on Sunday, 
the convict shall be discharged on the 
Saturday next preceding. 

Decision. — Many of the old decisions 
of Mass. are invalidated by the amend- 
ments of 1887, which legalized much 
that had previously been criminal (see 
p. 4). The following is the most impor- 
tant of recent decisions : A person who 
has the charge and control of a shop, 
and carries on the business thereof, 
although both the shop and the business 
are owned bj^ another, may be convicted 
of keeping open the shop on the Lord's 
Day, and in the complaint the shop is 
properly described as his shop ; Com- 
mon wealth v. Dale, 144 Mass., 363. 



SABBATH LAWS 

Michigan.— Sec. 2015. Am. 1877, 
p. 13, Mar. 2, Aug. 21, Act 19.— No per- 
son shall keep opein his shop, warehouse 
or workhouse, or shall do any manner of 
labor, bu§iiie§§, or work, or be pres- 
ent at any dancing, or at any public 
diversion, show, or entertainment, or 
take part in any sport, game, or play 
on the first day of the week. The fore- 
going provisions shall not apply to 
works of necessity and charity, nor to 
the making of mutual promises of 
marriag'e, nor to the solemnization of 
marriages. And every person so of- 
fending shall be punished by fine not 
exceeding ^10 for each offense. § 2016. 
No tavern keeper, retailer of spirit- 
uous liquors or other person keeping a 
house of public entertainment, shall en- 
tertain any persons, not being travelers, 
strangers or lodgers in his house, on the 
said first day of the week, or shall suffer 
any such person on said day to abide or 
remain in his house, or in the buildings, 
yards, or orchards or fields appertaining 
to the same, drinking, or spending their 
time idly, or at play, or in doing any 
secular business. § 2017. Every person 
offending against any of the provisions 
of the last preceding section, shall be 
punished by a fine not exceeding $3> for 
each person so entertained, or suffered 
so to abide or remain, and upon any 
eonvietion after the first, such 
offender shall be punished by a fine not 
exceeding $10, and if convietecl 
three times, he shall be afterwards 
ineapablc of holding a lieense, 
and every person so abiding or drinking 
shall be punished by a fine not exceed- 
ing 85. § 2018. No person shall be 
present at any game, sport, play, or 
public diversion, or resort to any public 
assembly, exeepting meetings for re- 
ligious worship or moi-al instruction, 
or coneerts of saered niusie. 
upon the evening of llio said first day of 
the week, and every person so offending 
shall be punished by a fine not exceed- 
ing i;5 for each offense. § 2019. No 
person shall serve or execute any civil 

»3 



OF MICHIGAN. 

proeess from midnight preceding, to 
midnight following the said first day of 
the week, but such service shall be void, 
and the person serving or executing 
such process, shall be liable in damages 
to the party aggrieved, in like manner 
as if he had not had any such process. 
§ 2020. If any person shall, on the said 
first day of the week, by rude and in- 
decent behavior, or in any other way, 
intentionally interrupt or disturb any 
assembly of people met for the pur- 
pose of worshiping God, he shall be 
punished by a fine not less than $2, nor 
more than ^50, or by imprisonment 
in the county jail not exceeding thirty 
days. § 2021. No person who con- 
scientiously believes that the seventh 
day of the week ought to be observed 
as the Sabbath, and actually refrains 
from secular business and labor on that 
day, shall be liable to the penalties pro- 
vided in this chapter, for performing 
secular business or labor on the first day 
of the week, provided he dastnrb no 
other person. § 2022. For the purposes 
of the provisions of this chapter, the 
said first day of the week shall be un- 
derstood to include all the time between 
the midnight preceding the mid- 
night following the said day, and no 
prosecution for any fine or penalty in- 
curred under any of the preceding pro- 
visions of this chapter, shall be com- 
menced after the expiration of three 
months from the time when the of- 
fense shall have been committed. 
§ 2274. All saloons, restaurants, bars, in 
taverns or elsewhere, and all other 
places where any of the liqours men- 
tioned in § 1 and § 2 of this act are or 
may be sold, or kept for sale, either at 
wholesale or retail, shall be closed on 
the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday, on all election days, on 
all legal holidays, and until seven 
o'clock of the following morning, and on 
each week day night from and after the 
hour of nine o'clock until seven o'clock 
of the morning of the succeeding 
day. The word "closed," in this section 



84 



shall be construed to apply to the back, 
door as well as to the front door. And 
in prosecutions under this section it 
shall not be necessary to prove 
that any liquor was sold : Pro- 
vided, that in all cities and incorporated 
villag-es the common council may, by 
ordinance, allow the saloons and other 
places where said liquors shall be sold to 
remain open not later than ten o'clock 
on any such week day night. § 7250. No 
court shall be opened, or transact any 
business on the first day of the week, 
unless it be for the purpose of instruct- 
ing or discharging a jury, or of receiv- 
ing a verdict ; but this section shall not 
prevent the exercise of the jurisdiction 
of any single magistrate, when it shall 
be necessary, in criminal cases, to pre- 
serve the peace, or to arrest offenders. 
§ 9174. Every person who shall wilfully 
commit any trespass, * * -^ shall be 
punished by imprisonment in the 
county jail not more than sixty days, or 
by fine not exceeding $100. § 9175. 
* * * and if any of the offenses men- 
tioned in this, or in the preceding sec- 
tion, shall be committed on the first day of 
the week or in disguise, or secretly in the 
iiight time, between sun setting and sun 
rising, the imprisonment shall not be less 
than five days, nor the fine less than $5. 

Session Laws, 1887, No. 28. (Arrests 
by Crame and Fisli \¥ardeia.) § 4. 
Such arrests may be made on Sunday, 
in which case the person arrested shall 
be taken before a justice of the peace, or 
other magistrate having jurisdiction, 
and proceeded against as soon as may 
be, on a week day following the arrest. 

Decisions. — A person laboring for 
another on Sunday, in a work not of 
necessity, cannot recover for injuries 
received from the carelessness and neg- 
ligence of his employer ; McGrath v. 
Merwin, 112 Mass., 467. Where a duty 
is imposed by law, as in case of a com- 
mon carrier, to carry safely, he is liable 
for damag-es resulting from the neglect 
of that duty, to one transporting prop- 
erty by his conveyance on Sunday con- 
trary to law ; Merritt v. Earle, 29 N. Y., 
115 ; Carroll v. Staten Island R. E,. Co., 
58 N. Y., 126. So, in Wisconsin, a town- 
ship was held liable for injuries result- 



ing from defects in a highway to a per- 
son driving his cattle to market on Sun- 
day ; Sutton V Wanwatosa, 29 Wis., 21 ; 
9 Am. Kept., 534. And see a similar 
principle in : Norris v. Litchfield, 35 N. 
H., 271 ; Contra, see, Bosworth v. Swan- 
sey, 10 Mete, 363 ; Jones v. Andover, 10 
Allen, 18 ; Hinckley v. Penobscot, 43 
Me., 89; Cratty v. Bangor, 57 Me., 423. 
A party letting a laorse for hire on Sun- 
day, to be used for pleasure, or in a 
work not of necessity or charity, can re- 
cover neither for the use of the horse, 
nor for injuries sustained by negligence 
or over driving ; Parker v. Latner, 60 
Me., 528; Way i;. Foster, 1 Allen, 409. 
No action lies for deception in a transac- 
tion entered into on Sunday ; Lyon v. 
Strong,, 6 Vt., 219; Northrup v. Foot, 14 
Wend., 248; Robeson -?;. French, 12 Mete, 
24. To "keep open" implies a 
readiness to carry on the usual business 
therein, etc. A city ordinance may per- 
mit the keepini^ open of a saloon 
on Sunday for the purpose of furnishing 
meals to regular boarders, .and prohibit 
its being kept open for the sale of 
liquors, etc., and punish for infractions 
of the latter prohibition ; Lynch v. Peo- 
ple, 16 Mich., 472. A statute requiring 
saloons to be " closed " on Sunday, 
means that sales and traffic therein shall 
be entirely shut off ; Kurtz v. People, 33 
Mich., 279. A judgment rendered on 
Sunday would be void ; Hemmens v. 
Bentley, 32 Mich. , 89. Service of a writ 
of certiorari on Sunday is void ; An- 
derson V. Birce, 3 Mich., 280. And so is 
the return of an execution ; Peck v. 
Cavell, 16 Mich., 9. It is the service of 
civil process only that is prohibited 
on Sunday ; arrests in criminal cases 
may be made on that day ; Pearce v. 
Atwood, 13 Mass., 324, 346. One who, 
on a week day, lends money on note 
which he does not know was made on 
Sunday, may recover, Beman v. Wessels, 
53 Mich., 549. A railroad aid subscrip- 
. tion signed on Sunday is prima facie 
void, and if the railroad company has 
not acted on it in good faith and without 
knowledge of the defect, must be rati- 
fied by delivery on a week day, Saginaw, 
Tuscola, etc., R. R. Co. v, Chappell, 56 
Mich., 190. 



SABBATH LAWS OF MINNESOTA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, MONTANA. 



Minnesota.— Ch. 100, §19. No per- 
son shall keep open his shop, warehouse 
or workhouse, or shall do an}^ manner of 
labor, l>iisiiies§ or work, except only 
works of necessity and charity, or be 
present at any dancing, or any public 
diversion, show or entertainment, or 
take part in any sport, game or play, on 
the Lord's Day, commonly called Sun- 
day ; and every person so offending 
shall be punished by a fine not exceeding 
$2 for each offense; provided, this 
section shall not apply to any person 
who religiously observes the seveiitli 
day of the week, commonly called 
Saturday, as the Sabbath, so far as re- 
(ates to his work or business avocations. 
lAs amended 1874, c. 47, §1.) [Decis- 
ions : 8 M. 1 (13), 9 M. 179 (194), 14 M. 
174, 20 M. 419, 23 M. 551.] § 20. For the 
purposes of the provisions of the nine- 
teenth section, the Lord's Day shall in- 
clude the time between the iiiidiii^lit 
preceding and the iiiidnig^lit following 
the said day. § 21. No person shall 
serve or execute any civil proce§s 
from midnight preceding to midnight 
following the Lord's Day, but such ser- 
vice shall be void, and the person serv- 
ing or executing such process shall be 
liable in damages to the party aggrieved, 
in like manner as if he had not had any 
such process. 

Ch. 16, § 2. Any person applying for 
license to sell intoxicating liquor§ 

* * * shall file * * '^ a bond 

* * * in the penal sum of .S500, con- 
ditioned that the said person so ficensed 
will not sell or otherwise dispose of 
spirituous, intoxicating or malt liquors 
(as the case may be), * * * on the 
Sabbath * * * 

(Crimes.) § 222. The first day of the 
week being by general consent set apart 
for rest and religious uses, the law pro- 
hibits the doing on that day of certain 
acts hereinafter specified, which are ser- 
ious interruptions of the repose and 
rehgious liberty of the community. 



§ 223. A violation of the foregoing pro- 
hibition is Sabbath breaking. 

[Decisions : Indictment dated on 
Sunday not void. State v. Nortan (Or.), 
17 Pac. Rep., 744. A note executed on 
Sunday is void. Brimhall v. Van 
Campen, 8 Minn., 13 (Gil. 1). A bond 
is not " executed" until delivery ; there- 
fore, although signed and sealed on 
Sunday, yet, if not delivered until a suc- 
ceeding secular day, it is valid. State v. 
Young, 23 Minn., 551. Recovery from a 
carrier for personal injuries received 
while traveling on Sunday. Bucher v. 
Cheshire R. Co., 8 Sup. Ct. Rep., 974.] 

§ 224. Under the term " day," as em- 
ployed in the phrase "first day of the 
week," when used in this chapter, is in- 
cluded all the time from midnig-ht to 
midnii^lit. § 225. All labor on Sun- 
day is prohibited, excepting the works 
of necessity or charity. In works of 
necessity or charity is inchided what- 
ever is needful during the day for g'ood 
order, liealtli, or comfort of the 
community. Provided, however, that 
keeping open a barber shop on 
Sunday for the purpose of cutting- hair 
and shaving beards shall not be deemed 
a work of necessity or charity. (As 
amended 1887, c. 54.) 

[Decisions : Operating an ice factory 
held a work of necessity. Henners- 
dorf V. State (Tex.), 8 S. W. Rep., 926. 
So, also, shoeing horses used by a 
stage company engaged in transporting 
United States mail. Nelson v. State 
(Tex.), Id., 927. See Friedeborn v. Com. 
(Pa.), 6 Atl. Rep., 160.] 

§ 226. It is a sufficient defense to a 
prosecution for servile labor on the first 
day of the week that the defendant 
uniformly keeps another day of the 
week as holy time, and does not labor 
upon that day, and that the labor 
complained of was done in such man- 
ner as not to interrupt or distiarb 
other persons in observing the first 
day of the week as holy time. 



§ 227. All shooting, bunting, fishing, 
playing, horse-racing, gaining, or 

other puhlic sports, exercises or 
shows, upon the first day of the week, 
and all noise disturbing the peace of the 
day, are prohibited. §228. All trades, 
manufactures, and mechanical em- 
ployments upon the first day of the 
week are prohibited, except that 
when the same are works of necessity 
they may be performed on that day in 
their usual and orderly manner, so as not 
to interfere with the repose and religious 
liberty of the community. § 229. All 
manner of public selBing, or offer- 
ing for sale, of any property upon Sun- 
day is prohibited, except that articles 
of food may be sold and supplied at any 
time before ten o'clock in the morning, 
and except also that meals may be 
sold to be eaten on the premises where 
sold or served elsewhere by caterers ; 
and prepared tobacco in places other 
than where spirituous or malt liquors or 
wines are kept or offered for sale, and 
fruit, confectionery, ne\«^spa- 
pers, drugs, medicines, and sur 
gical appliances may be sold in a quiet 
and orderly manner at any time of the 
day. 

[Decisions : Selling soda water on 
Sunday illegal. Splane v. Com., (Pa.), 
12Atl. Rep., 431. 

Beer may not be publicly sold on 
Sunday, State v. Baden (Minn.), 34 
N. W. Rep., 24. Purchaser not parti- 
eeps criminis, and not an accomplice, 
though in pursuit of evidence against 
persons selling unlawfully. Id. 

The sale of a horse consummated on 
Sunday is void, and an action on the 
warranty in such sale will not lie. Finley 
V. Quirk, 9 Minn., 194 (Gil. 180). See 
Friedeborn V. Com. (Pa.), 6 Atl. Rep. 160.] 

§ 230. All service of legal process of 
any kind whatever, upon the first day of 
the week, is prohibited, except in cases 
of breach of the peace, or apprehended 
breach of the peace, or when sued 
out for the apprehension of a person 
charged with crime, or except where 
such service is specially authorized by 
statute. §231. Sabbath breaking is 
a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine 



not less than $1 and not more than 
^10, or by imprisonment in a 

county jail not exceeding five days, 
or by both. § 232. Preventing per- 
formance of religious act, 

A person who wilfully prevents, by 
threats or violence, another person 
from performing any lawful act en- 
joined upon or recommended to such 
person by the religion which he pro- 
fesses, is guilty of a misdemeanor. 
§233^ disturbing religious meet- 
ings. A person who wilfully disturbs, 
interrupts, or disquiets any assemblage 
of people, m-et for religious worship, by 
any acts enumerated in the next section, 
is guilty of a misdemeanor [see 350, 489, 
Post]. § 234. The following acts, or any 
of them, constitute disturbance of a reli- 
gious meeting: 1. Uttering any pro- 
fane discourse, committing any rude or 
indecent act, or making any unneces- 
sary noise, either within the place where 
such meeting is held, or so near it as to 
disturb the order and solemnity of the 
meeting. 2. Engaging in, or promoting 
within one mile of the place where a 
religious meeting is held, any racing of 
animals or gaming of any description, 
3. Obstructing in any manner, without 
authority of law, within the like dis- 
tance, free passage along a highway to 
the place of such meeting. 

(Intoxicating liquors). Chap. 16, 
§ 10. It shall be unlawful for any person 
in any city, village, town or borough in 
this State to sell, barter, furnish, or dis- 
pose of in any manner, either directly or 
indirectly, or by agent, employee, or 
otherwise, any intoxicating liquor in 
any quantity or for any purpose what- 
ever on the Sabbath day, or on any 
general or special election day, and all 
places where the sale of intoxicating 
liquors shall be licensed, under the pro- 
visions of any law or ordinance, shall be 
closed during all hours of every Sabbath 
day, and of any general or special elec- 
tion day ; and any person violating any 
of the provisions of this section shall be 
guilty of a misdemeanor, and on convic- 
tion thereof by any court having juris- 
diction shall be punished by a fine of not 
less than $30, nor more than $100, and 



87 



costs of prosecution, and by ii]ipri§on- 

nieiit in the coiint}^ jail not less than 
ten days, nor more than thirty daj^s. 
(As amended 1877, c. 44, Sec. 1 ; 1887, c. 
SI, Sec. 1.) 



Mississippi.— 1880. § 2949. If any 
person, on the Sabbath day, commonl^^ 
called Sundaj^ shall himself be found 
laboring- at his own, or any other trade, 
calling or business, or shall employ his 
:apprentice, or servant, in labor or 
Otiier biisiiie§§, except it be in the 
ordinary household offices of daily nec- 
essity, or other work of necessity or 
<;harity, he shall, on conviction, be 
fined, not more than $20, for every 
offense, deeming every apprentice or 
servant, so employed, as constituting 
a distinct offense, provided, that nothing 
in this section shall apply to railroads, 
or steamboat navigation in this State. 
§ 2950. No merchant, shopkeeper, or 
other person, except apothecaries and 
druggists, shall keep open store, or 
•dispose of any wares or merchandise, 
;goods or chattels, on Sundaj^, or sell or 
barter the same, and every person, so 
offending, shall, on conviction, be fined 
not more than twenty dollars, for 
every such offense. § 2951. If any per- 
son shall show forth, exhibit, represent 
or perform, or cause to be shown forth, 
acted, represented or performed any 
interludes, farces, or plays of any 
kind, or any games, tricks, juggling, 
sleight of hand, or feats of dexterity, 
-agility of body, or any bear baiting, or 
any bull baiting, liorse racing or cock 
fighting, or any such like show or exhi- 
iDition whatsoever, on Sunday, every 
person so offending, shall be fined 
not more than ^50. § 2952. If any 
person shall be found hunting 
with a gun, or with dogs, on the 
Sabbath, or fishing in any way, he 
shall, on conviction thereof, be fined 
not less than So, nor more than ^20. 
§ 2953. It shall not be lawful for any 
person, having license to sell vinous or 
spirituous liquors, to keep open the 
bar, or place where such liquors are 
sold, or to sell any such hquoi-s, on the 
first day of the week, commonly called 



Sunday, and any person so offending, 
shall be liable to a fine of not less than $50, 
nor more than $100, for each offense. 
§ 1904. Injunctions may in all cases, 
be granted, issued and executed on Sun- 
day, if the judge or chancellor considers 
it proper, and this provision shall apply 
to all other remedial process. § 2471. 
Attachments may, in all cases, be issued 
and executed on Sunday, and may be 
executed in any part of the county, by 
any constable of the county, or by the 
constable or police officer of any incor- 
porated city or town, in the same man- 
ner as by the sheriff of the county ; and 
in cases of emergency, and when a 
sheriff, or his deputy, or a constable, or 
police officer cannot be had in time, the 
officer issuing an attachment may ap- 
point some reputable person to execute 
such attachment, and such officer shall 
be liable on his bond and individually, 
for the consequence of appointing an 
insolvent or incompetent person for such 
service. 

Missouri.— Sec. 1054. No court shall 
be open or transact business on Sunday, 
unless it be for the purpose of receiving- 
a verdict or discharging a jury, and 
every adjournment of a court on Satur- 
day shall always be to some other day 
than Sunday, except such adjournment 
as may be made after a cause has been 
committed to a jury ; but this section 
shall not prevent the exercise of the 
jurisdiction of any magistrate, when it 
shall be necessary, in criminal cases, to 
preserve the peace or arrest the offender, 
nor shall it prevent the issuing and ser- 
vice of any attachment in a case where 
a debtor is about fraudulently to secrete 
or remove his effects. (G. S. 540, Sec. 
34.) 

[Decisions.— From 12 o'clock Saturday 
night until 12 o'clock Sunday night, 
courts cannot sit to transact business. 
37 Mo., 466.] 

§ 1578. Every person who shall either 
labor himself, or compel or permit his 
apprentice, or servant, or any other 
person under his charge or control, to 
labor or perform any work other than 
the household offices of daily necessity, 
or other works of necessity or charity, 



88 



or who shall be guilty of tiunting 

game or shooting- on the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunday, shall be 
deemed guilt}'" of a misdemeanor, and 
fined not exceeding' ^50. — (Laws 1877, 
p. 241, Sec. 1, amended.) § 1579. The 
last section shall not extend to any per- 
son who is a member of a religious 
society, toy ^vhom any other ttian 
tlie first day of tlie week is ob- 
served as a Sabbath, so that he 
observes such Sabbath, nor to prohibit 
any ferryman from crossing passen- 
gers on any day of the week. — (G. S. 819, 
Sec. 33.) § 1580. Every person who shall 
be convicted of Iiorse racing, cock 
fighting, or playing at cards or g'aines 
of any kind on the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sundaj^ shall 
be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor 
and fined not exceeding $50, — (G. S. 
819, Sec. 34.) § 1581. Every person who 
shall expose to sale any goods, 
wares or merchandise, or shall keep open 
any ale or porter -house, grocery or 
tippling shop, or shall sell or retail any 
fermented or distilled liquor on the 
first day of the week, commonly called 
Sunday, shall, on conviction, be ad- 
judged guilty of a misdemeanor and 
fined not exceeding ^50.— (G. S. 819, 
Sec. 35.) §1582. The last section shall 
not be construed to prevent the sale of 
any drug's or medicines, provisions 
or otlier articles of immediate 
necessity.— (G. S. 819, Sec. 36.) § 5456. 
Any person having a license as a dram- 
shop keeper, who shall keep open 
suck dramskop, or shall sell, give 
away or otherwise dispose of, or suffer 
the same to be done upon or about his 
premises, any intoxicating liquors in 
any quantity, on the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunday, shall, 
upon conviction thereof, in addition to 
the penalty now provided by law, 
forfeit such license, and shall not 
again be allowed to obtain a license 
to keep a dramshop for the term of 
two years next thereafter. 



Montana.— § 1406. Hereafter it shall 
be unlawful for any person or persons 
to keep open any play house, tkeatre, 
dance liouse, hurdy gurdy house, 
prize ring or race grounds on the 
first day of the week, commonly called 
the Lord's Day. § 1497. Hereafter it 
shall be unlawful for any person or per- 
sons to keep open any house or other 
habitation wherein any game of 
chance is played, or open any banking* 
game at cards on the first day of the 
week, commonly called the Lord's Day. 
§ 1408. If any psrson or persons shall 
violate the provisions of this chapter 
they shall be deemed guilty of a mis- 
demeanor, and upon conviction there- 
of before any court having competent 
jurisdiction, shall be fined in any sum 
not less than $10, nor more than §100, 
or be imprisoned in the county jail 
not less than one nor taore than thirty 
days for such offense, or by both such 
fine and imprisonment, and shall be ad- 
judged to pay all costs of such prosecu- 
tion. § 1409. Justices of the peace shall 
have jurisdiction in all cases arising 
under the provisions of this chapter. 
§ 1410. All fines collected under this, 
chapter shall be paid into the county 
treasury of the county where such con- 
viction was had, and shall be for tke 
benefit of the common schools of 
the said countj^^. 



[Editor's Note.— This law is not en- 
forced partly because it is not believed 
to be constitutional, as it surely is not 
equitable, to forbid actors and pugulists 
and licensed gamblers to carry on their 
business on the Sabbath while allowing 
liquor dealers and merchants and com- 
mon laborers to work or be worked as- 
usual on that day. Now that Montana 
has put on Statehood it will be expected 
to put off this monstrosity of frontier 
legislation, the worst off all the Sabbath 
laws of our States and Territories^ 
bordering on California's no-law.] 



SABBATH LAWS OF NEBRASKA, NEVADA, NEW HAMPSHIRE. 



Nebraska. — Code of Civil Procedure, 
§ 395. The time within which au 
act is to be done as herein provided, 
shall be eoiiiputecl by excluding the 
first day and including- the last ; if 
the last day be Sundaj^ it shall be ex- 
cluded. 

Statutes, Ch. 19, § 38. No court can 
be opened, nor can any judical business 
be transacted on Sunday, or on any 
legal holiday except: I. To give instruc- 
tions to a jury then deliberating on 
their verdict. II. To receive a verdict, 
or discharge a jury. III. To exercise 
the powers of a single magistrate in a 
criminal proceeding. Ch. 50, § 14. 
Every person who shall sell or give 
away any malt, spirituous and vinous 
liquors on the day of any general or 
special election, or at any time during 
the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday, shall forfeit and pay for 
every such offense, the sum of $100. 

Criminal Code, Ch. 23, § 241. If any 
person of the age of fourteen years 
or upward, shall be found on the 
first day of the week, commonly -called 
Sunday, sporting*, rioting, quarrelling, 
hunting, fishing or shooting, he or 
she shall be fined in a sum not exceed- 
ing $20, or or be confined in the 
county jail for a term not exceeding 
twenty days, or both, at the discretion 
of the coiu-t. And if any person of the 
age of fourteen years or upward, shall 
be found on the first day of the week, 
commonly called Sunday, at common 
labor (work of necessity and charity 
only excepted) he or she shall be fined 
in any sum not exceeding $5 nor less 
than $1, provided, nothing herein con- 
tained in relation to common labor on 
said first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday, shall be construed to ex- 
tend to those who conscientiously do ob- 
serve the seventh day of the week as 
the Sabbath, nor to prevent families 
emigrating from travoling, water- 
men fioin landing their passengers, 



superintendents or keepers of toll 
bridges or toll gates from attending- 
and superintending the same, or ferry- 
men from conveying travelers over the 
water, or persons moving their families 
on such days, or to prevent railway 
companies from running neeessary 
trains. 

Decision. — A laborer on a railroad,, 
required to work on Sunday, may main- 
tain an action for damages sustained 
on that day by the negligence of the com- 
pan}^ Johnson v. Missouri Pacific Ry. 
Co., 18 Neb., 690. 



Nevada.— Sec. 3528. The time within: 
which an act is to be done, as provided 
in this act, shall be eomputed by ex- 
cluding the first day and including the 
last. If the last day be Sunday it shall 
be excluded. § 3705. Any writ or pro- 
eess authorized by this act may be is- 
sued and served on the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunday or any 
other non-judicial day. [Decision: Gree- 
ley V. Holland, 14Nev., 320.] 

§ 4847. No person shall open any 
playhouse or theatre, raee ground, 
cock pit, or play at any game of 
elianee for gain, or engage in any 
noisy amusement, on the first day of 
the week, commonly called the Lord's 
Day. § 4848. No judical business shall be 
transacted by any eourt except deliber- 
ations of a jury who have received a case 
on a week day, so called, and who may re- 
ceive further instructions from the court 
at their request, or deliver their verdict; 
nor any civil proeess be served by 
any certifying or attesting officer, nor 
any record made by any legally ap- 
pointed or elected officer, upon the first 
day of the week, commonly called the 
Lord's Day; provided, that criminal pro- 
cess may issue for the apprehension of 
any person charged with crime, and 
criminal examination be proceeded 
with. § 4849. Any person or persons, 
violating tlie provisions of the two- 



89 



90 



preceding sections oi this act shall be 
punished, on conviction thereof, by a 
fine of not less than thirty dollars, 
nor more than ^250, for each offense. 

§ 4850. Justicesof the peace may have 
jiirisdictioii of all complaints arising 
under the aforesaid act. § 4851. On 
complaint of any person, before a jus- 
tice of the peace, the person or persons 
found guilty of any offenses specified in 
this act shall be fined as aforesaid, to 
be paid to the treasurer of the terri- 
tory, for the benefit of eonimon 
seliool§i ; and the offender shall, in 
addition to the said fine and the costs 
of prosecution, give t>oiid§, with two 
good and sufficient sureties, in the sum 
of not less than $200, nor more than 
^500, for good behavior during any time 
within the discretion of the court, and 
stand committed till the wliole order is 
<3omplied with and the fine be paid. 
[Ex parte Winston, 9 Nev., 71 ; State v. 
Cahfornia Mining Co., 13 Nev., 203.] 

[Editor's Note. — Nevada is often 
spoken of as having "no Sunday law." 
It is a very slight mistake, for it has next 
to none. Servile labor and business and 
liquor selling are all unrestrained, as in 
Jdontana. All other States that have 
any Sabbath law at all forbid "labor," 
and all, except Texas, " liquor." At 
the foot of the list of States and Terri- 
tories stand Alaska, Arizona, California, 
the District of Columbia and Idaho, with 
no Sabbath laws at all. Then comes 
Montana and Nevada, with next to 
none. After these those which give 
least protection against Sunday work to 
their people are Louisiana, Massachu- 
setts 



New Hampshire.— (Offenses against 
IVIorality and Religion.) Chap. 273. § 3. 
No person shall do any work, busi- 
ness, or labor of his secular callingj to 
the disturbance of others, works of nec- 
essity and mercy excepted, on the first 



day of the week, commonly -called the 
Lord's Day ; nor shall any person use any 
pl&j, game or recreation on that day 
or any part thereof. This section shall 
not be construed to prevent necessary 
repairs in mills and factories which 
could not be made on a week day without 
throwing many operatives out of em- 
ployment. § 4. No person shall, on the 
Lord's Day, within the walls of any 
house of public worship or near the 
same, behave redely or indecently, 
either in the time of public service or be- 
tween the forenoon and afternoon ser- 
vices. § 5. Any person offending against 
any provision of the last two preceding 
sections of this chapter, shall forfeit a 
sum not exceeding $6, which shall be 
recovered by any selectman or police 
officer, for the use of the town. 

§ 10. No person shall keep open 
his shop, warehouse, cellar, restaurant 
or workshop, for the reception of com- 
pany, or shall sell or expose for sale any 
merchandise whatsoever on the first day 
of the week, commonly called the Lord's 
Day ; but this section shall not be con- 
strued to prevent the entertainment 
of boarders, or the sale of milk, 
bread, and other necessaries of 
life, or dru^s, and medicines. § 11. 
If any person shall be guilty of a breach 
of either of the two preceding sections, 
he shall be fined not exceeding ^10, 
or imprisoned not exceeding thirty 
days, or both. § 13. Any person, up- 
on view of any offense described in this 
chapter, may apprehend the of- 
fender, and bring him before a justice 
for trial. § 15. No prosecution for 
the violation of any provision of this 
chapter, shall be sustained unless com- 
menced within thirty days after the 
commission of such offense. 

Decision.— A bailee's breach of his 
Sunday contract for the exercise of care 
in the Sunday use of the thing bailed is 
not actionable. Chenette v. Teehan, 63 
N. H., 149. 



SABBATH LAWS 

New Jersey. — Revised Statutes, page, 
1327. § 1. That no traveling, worldly 
employment or busiiici^isi, ordinary or 
servile labor or work, either upon land 
or water, (works of necessitj^ and char- 
ity excepted) nor shooting, ll§9iiiig:, (not 
including fishing with a seine or net, 
which is hereafter provided for), sport- 
ing, liuiitiii§^, gunning, racing or fre- 
diueiitiiig of tippling houses, or 
any interludes or plays, dancing, sing- 
ing, fiddling or other music for the sake 
of merriment, nor any playing at foot- 
hall, fives, nine-pins, howls, long bullets 
or quoits, nor any other kind of playing, 
sports, pastimes, or diversions, shall be 
done, performed, used or jDracticed by any 
person or persons within this State on 
the Christian Sabbath, or first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunda3\ [Reeves 
V. Butcher, 2 Vr., 224; Ryno v. Darby, 
5 C. E. Gr., 231 ; Crocket v. Vander- 
veer, Penn., 856 ; State v. William, 1 
Vr., 102; Taylor v. Thomas, 1 Gr. Ch., 
106 ; Scott V. bow, 2 Gr., 350.] And that 
every person being of the age of four- 
teen years or upivarcls, offending 
in the premises, shall for every such 
offense, forfeit and pay to the use 
of the poor of the township in which 
such offense shall be committed, the 
sum of $1 ; and that no person shall 
cry, show forth or expose to sale 
an}' wares, merchandise, fruit, herbs, 
meat, fish, goods, or chattels, upon the 
first day of tiie week, commonly called 
Sunday, or sell or barter the same, upon 
pain that every person so offending 
shall forfeit and pay to the use of the 
poor of the township where such offense 
shall be committed, the sum of ^2; 
and if any person offending in any of 
the premises shall be thereof convicted 
btfore any justice of tke peace for the 
county w?iere the offense shall be com- 
mitted, upon the view of tlie said justice 
or confession of the party offending, or 
proof of any witness or witnesses upon 
oath or affirmation, then the said jus- 
:iice before whom such conviction shall 



OF NEW JERSEY. 

be had, shall direct and send his war- 
rant, under his hand and seal, to some 
constable of the county where the offense 
shall have been committed, commanding 
him to levy the said forfeitures or penal- 
ties by distress and sale of the goods and 
chattels of such offenders, and to pay 
the money therefrom arising to the 
overseers of tlic poor of the township 
where the said offense or offenses shall 
have been committed, for the use of the 
poor thereof; and in case no such dis- 
tress can be had, then every such of- 
fender shall, by a warrant under the 
hand and seal of the justice, be com- 
mitted to the common jail of the said 
county, or to the jail of any city or 
town corporate within the same, for a 
term not exceeding ten days, to be 
certainly expressed in said warrant ; and 
further, that if any person shall be 
found fisliing, sporting, playing, 
dancing, fiddling, shooting, hunting, 
gunning, traveling, or going to or re- 
turning from any market or landing with 
carts, wagons or sleds, or behaving in a 
disorderly manner on the first day of 
the week, called Sunday, it shall be law- 
ful for any constable, or other citizen, 
to stop every person so offending, and 
to detain him or her till the next day, 
to be dealt with according to law ; pro- 
vided alwa3^s, that no person going to or 
returning from any church or place of 
worship, within the distance of twenty 
miles, or going to call a physician, sur- 
geon or midwife, or carrying a mail to 
or from any post office, or going express 
by order of any public officer, shall be 
considered as traveling within the mean- 
ing of this act; and provided also, that 
nothing in this act contained, shall be 
construed to prohibit tlie dressing of 
victuals in private families or in lodging 
houses, inns and other houses of enter- 
tainment for the use of sojourners, 
travelers or strangers ; and provided 
further, that it shall and may be lawful 
for any railroad company i a this State to 
run one passenger train each wiiy 



92 



over their roads on Sunday, for the ac- 
commodation of the citizens of this 
State. § 2. No person shall, on the first 
day of the week, called Sunday, 
cast, draw, or make use of any seine or 
net, for the purpose of catching fish in 
any pond, lake, stream or river, within 
the territorial limits or jurisdiction of 
this State, or be aiding- or assisting- there- 
in, and every person offending in the 
premises shall, on being' thereof con- 
victed before any justice of the peace 
for the county where the offense shall 
be committed, upon the view of the 
said justice, or confession of the party 
offending, or proof of any witness or 
witnesses upon oath or affirmation, for- 
feit and pay the sum of ^14 for every 
such offense ; and in case of non- 
payment of the said forfeiture, then 
the said justice before whom such con- 
viction shall be had, shall direct and 
send his warrant, under his hand and 
seal, to some constable of the county in 
which the offense shall have been com- 
mitted, commanding him to levy the 
said forfeiture or penalty by distress 
and sale of the goods and chattels of 
such offender, and to pay tlie money 
therefrom arising to the overseers of tlie 
p©®r of the township where the said 
offense shall have been committed, for 
the use of the poor thereof and for want 
of goods and chattels whereby to make 
such distress, to convey the body of the 
said offender to the common jail of the 
county, or the jail of any city or town 
corporate within the same, there to re- 
main in safe custody until the said for- 
feiture, with the costs of prosecution, 
shall be fully paid, or until such offender 
shall be delivered by due course of law. § 
3. If any stage or stages shall be driven 
through any part of this State on the first 
day of the week^called Sunday, except 
sufficient reason shall be offered to show 
that it be done in cases of necessity or 
mercy, or in case of carrying the mail to 
or from any post office, the driver or 
drivers, proprietor or proprietors of such 
stage or stages, shall, on being thereof 
convicted before any justice of the peace 
for the county where the offense shall 
be committed, upon the view of the said 



justice, or confession of the party offend- 
ing, or testimony of any witness or 
witnesses, forfeit and pay the sum of 
$8 for every such offense ; and in 
case of non-paj^ment of the said forfeit- 
ure or penalty, then the same shall be 
levied, recovered and applied in the man- 
ner and form prescribed in and by the 
second section of this act ; and every 
justice of the peace in this State is here- 
by empowered and required, upon his 
personal knowledge or view, or other 
due information, of any stage or stages 
being driven or run through any part of 
this State as aforesaid, to stop and 
detain the same, or order and 
direct the same to be stopped and 
detained, at the cost and expense 
of the proprietor or proprietors of 
such stage or stages, until the following 
day, and then to be dealt with as herein- 
before directed. § 4. No wagoner, car- 
ter, drayman, drover, butcher, or any 
of his or their servants, shall ply or 
travel with his or their wagons, carts 
or drays, or shall load or unload any 
goods, wares, merchandise, or produce, 
or drive cattle, sheep or swine, in any 
part of this State, on the first day of the 
week, called Sunday, under the penalty 
of $2 for every offense, to be levied, 
recovered and applied, in the manner 
and form prescribed in the second section 
of this act. § 5. No person or persons, 
upon the first day of the week, common- 
ly called Sunday, shall serve or execute, 
or cause to be served or executed, any 
writ, process, warrant, order, judg- 
ment or decree (except in criminal cases 
or for breach of the peace), but that the 
service of every such writ, process, 
warrant, order, judgment or decree, 
shall be void to all intents and purposes 
whatsoever ; and the person or per- 
sons so serving or executing the same, 
shall be as liable to the suit of 
the party grieved, and to answer dam- 
ages to him for doing thereof, as if 
he or they had done the same without 
any writ, process, warrant, order, judg- 
ment or decree. § 9. If any person or 
persons whatsoever, either on the first 
day of the week, called Sunday, or on 
any other day or time shall willfully 



and of purpose, disquiet, interrupt or 
disturb any assembly of people met for 
religious worship * * * shall upon con- 
viction before any justice of the peace 
forfeit and pay the sum of $10, or be 
committed ta jail for a term not exceed- 
ing- ten days. § 13. IVo transporta- 
tion of freight, excepting milk, on 
an}' public highway, railroad or canal, 
shall be done or allowed by any person 
or persons within this State, on the first 
day of the week, commonly called the 
Christian Sabbath ; provided, that noth- 
ing in this act contained shall be con- 
strued so as to prevent the transporta- 
tion of the United States mail by 
railroad or on the public highways, or to 
the regular trips of ferry boats within 
the State or between this and another 
State. § 17. If any person or persons 
shall disturb or interrupt any relig- 
ious meeting as aforesaid, on the first 
day of the week, called Sunday, it shall 
be lawful for any constable or member of 
the meeting, and a citizen or freeholder 
as aforesaid, to apprehend such person or 
persons immediately, and detain him or 
them until the next day, then to be dealt 
Avith according to law, unless said 
offender or offenders shall give sufficient 
security before some magistrate, to ap- 
l)ear at any time and place that he may 
direct, to answer the charge preferred 
against him or them, in which case it 
shall be lawful for said magistrate to 
discharge such offender or offenders. 
^ 31. Every justice of the peace in this 
State in hereby empowered and required, 
upon his personal knowledge or view, 
or other due information, of any canal 
boat, or railroad car, tansporting freight 
through any part of this State, as afore- 
said, he shall be authorized and required 
to stop and detain the same, or order the 
same to be stopped and detained, at the 
<ost and expense of the proprietor or 
proprietors of such canal boat or rail- 
load car, until the following day and 
then to be dealt with as hereinbefore is 
directed. § 32. This shall apply also to 
cattle, sheep and hogs being driven to 
market on the Sabbath day. § 33. Every 
inhabitant of this State, wlio religiously 
observes the seventh daj of the week 



as the Sabbath, shall be exempt from an- 
swering to anyproeess, in law or equi- 
ty, either as defendant, witness or juror, 
except in criminal cases ; likewise from 
executing, on the said day, the duties 
of any post or office to which he may be 
appointed or commissioned, except when 
the interest of the State may absolutely 
require it, and shall also be exempt from 
working on the highways and doing any 
militia duty on that day, except when 
in actual service. § 34. If any person, 
charged with having labored or worked 
on the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday, shall be brought before a 
justice of the peace to answer the in- 
formation and charge thereof, and shall 
then and there prove, to the satisfaction 
of the said justice, that he or she uni- 
formly keeps the seventh day of the 
week as the Sabbath, and habitually ab- 
stains from following his or her usual 
occupation or business and from all 
recreation, and devotes the day to the 
exercise of religious worship, then such 
defendant shall be discharged ; provided 
always that the work or labor, for which 
such person is informed against, was 
done and performed in his or her dwell- 
inghouse or workshop or on his or her 
premises or plantation, and that such 
work or labor has not disturbed other 
persons in the observance of the first 
day of the week as the Sabbath; and 
provided also, that nothing in this 
section contained shall be construed 
to allow any sueh person to 
openly expose to sale any goods, 
wares, merchandise or other article or 
thing whatsoever in the line of his or her 
business or occupation. 

Page 1117, State Prisons, Art. VII.— 
Each convict shall every day, except 
Sundays, be kept at hard labor. 

Page 355, § 95. — Election committees 
shall sit from day to day, Sundays ex- 
cepted. 

Page 450, Oame and Oanie Fish, 
(15), § 1.— The Act of 1866 is hereby ex- 
tended so as to include all persons who 
shall fish, with hook and line, for any 
kind of fish whatsoever, on the Sabbath 
day, except those mentioned in the fifth 
section of the supplement to said act. 



94 



Page 428, Fisheries, (17), §1.— If any 
person or persons, whomsover, shall 
cast, draw, or in any wise make use of 
any seine or net in the river Delaware, 
within the jurisdiction of this State, 
from sunset on Saturday until 
sunrise on Monday of each and 
every week, he, she, or they so offend- 
ing shall forfeit and pay the sum of 
$250, together with costs of suit, 
for each and every offense ; provided, 
that nothing in this section contained, 
shall prevent the owners or occupiers 
of eddy fisheries above the tide water,, 
from beginning to fish at twelve o'clock 
on Sunday night. 

Page 431, (31), § 1. — If any person or 
persons whosoever, shall cast or lay out 
any seine or net in the river Delaware, 
within the concurrent jurisdiction of 
this State and State of Pennsylvania, 
from sunset on Saturday until twelve 
o'clock on Sunday niglit of each and 
every week, he, she, or they so offend- 
ing shall forfeit and pay the sum of 
§100, together with costs of suit, for 
eacli and every offense. 

Page 450, Game etc., (14), § 5. — Any 
person who shall liunt witii a gun, or 
witli a dog and gun, or with any kind of 
firearm or weapon, or shall in any way 
kill, take or destroy with any trap, snare, 
or other device whatsoever, any bird or 
animal whatever, on the Sabbath day, 
commonly called Sunday, except those 
who observe the seventh day of the 
week as the Sabbath, gunning upon their 
own lands, shall be liable to a penalty of 
twenty-five dollars for each and every 
offense. 

Laws of 1888, Ch. 110, § 2.— If the 
holder of any such license shall sell or 
offer for sale, barter or give, or suffer 
to be sold or offered for sale, bartered or 
given within his l^vern, beer shop, liquor 
saloon or other premises, any spirituous, 
vinous or malt liquors on the first day 
of the week commonly called Sunday, 
* * * his license shall thereby become 



forfeited and void. [Renewed 1889,, 
Ch. 51, § 10,J 

Session Lavts, 1881, Ch. 211.— § 2. 
Boards of Trustees, etc., of any incor- 
porated camp meeting^ association or 
seaside resort, etc., shall haVe power, by 
ordinance or otherwise, to regulate or 
restrain the running of any railroad 
train, locomotive or cars upon any rail- 
road track within said premises upon 
the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday. § 3. Said trustees, etc., 
may, by ordinance or otherwise, regulate 
the landing of persons on piers by means- ' 
of boats, etc., etc., on Sunday, 

Session Laws, 1884, Ch. 145. -§ L 
From and after the passage of this Act 
it shall be lawful for any Court or 
county officer to publish any notice 

or advertisement, now required by law 
to be published in anj'- newspaper in this 
State, in any Sunday ne^vspaper 

which has been published in such county 
for the period of at least one year ; and 
such publication shall be as valid and 
legal as if the same had been made in 
any newspaper of this State now author- 
ized by law to publish such notices or 
advertisements. 

Decisions. — On Sunday a tenant was 
notified that if he held over after the ex- 
piration of the term he would be charged 
an increased rent. Held, that his re- 
maining in possession after the expira- 
tion of the term did not import a con- 
tract to pay at the increased rate. State 
V. Ryan, 49 N. J. L., 314. Under N. J. 
Rev. St., p. 1277, prohibiting Sunday 
traveling, save for necessity or charity, 
with the proviso that railroad companies 
may run one train a day each way " for 
the accommodation of citizens of this 
State," — held, that a passenger on such 
train, though not traveling for necessity 
or charity, could recover for the negli- 
gence of the company. Smith v. N. Y., 
Susquehanna, &c., R. R. Co., 46 N. J. 
L.,7. 



SABBATH LAWS OP NEW 

New Mexico.— (Sabbath Observance.) 
§ 933. Any person or persons, who 
shall be found on the first day of the 
week, called Sunda}^ engaged in any 
games or sports, or in liorse racing, 
cock fighting, claneiiig, or in any other 
manner <li!«tiirbiiig any worshiping 
assembly, or private family, or in biiy- 
ingr, or selling any good!!i, wares or 
merchandise, chattels, or liquors, or 
any other kind of property, or in hold- 
ing or attending any public meet- 
ing or public exhibition, except for re- 
ligious worship or instruction, or en- 
gaged in any labor, except works of 
necessity, charity or mercy, or who 
shall keep open any store, shop or 
office, or other place of business, or place 
for the display of goods, wares, or mer- 
chandise, shall be punished by a fine 
not exceeding §50, nor less than $10, 
for the first offense, and for the second 
or any subsequent offense, by a fine 
of not less than 825, nor more than ^100, 
or by imprisonment of not less than 
five, nor more than twenty days, in the 
discretion of the court, or justice, upon 
conviction before any district court, or 
justice of the peace : provided, that 
none of the provisions of this act shall 
be construed to prevent travelers from 
prosecuting their journey, and keepers 
of ferryboats, livery stables, 
hotels, or restam-ants from supplying 
the wants of their boarders or lodgers, 
on said day ; barbers may also pursue 
their vocation; and provided further, 
that butcliers and bakers may keep 
their establishments open, and sell meat, 
bread and like articles, but shall not sell 
liquors or general merchandise ; and 
apotliecari6s may likewise keep open 
their places of business, and sell and 
dehver drugs, or medicines, and surgical 
instruments, and medical apparatus, but 
no other articles on said day. [The fore- 
going section amended, 1886-7, Chap. 
XXVI., to road as follows :] 

§ 933. Any person or persons wiio 
shall be found on the first day of the 



MEXICO AND NEW YORK. 

week, called Sundaj'-, engaged in any 
sports, or in horse racing, cock fight- 
ing or in an}'- other manner disturb- 
ing- any worshiping assembly, or private 
family, or attending any public 
meeting, or public exhibition, except- 
ing" for religious worship, or instruction, 
or engaged in any labor, except works 
of necessity, charity or mercy, shall be 
punished by a fine not exceeding #15, 
nor less than $5, or imprisonment 
in the county jail of not more than fif- 
teen days, nor less than five days, in the 
discretion of the court, upon conviction 
before any district court. All fisie§ col- 
lected under this act to be applied to 
tlie school fund of the district in 
which the offense was committed. It 
shall be the duty of any sheriff collect- 
ing said fine to pay the same to the 
county treasurer, to the credit of the 
school district of thU county in which 
the said offense was committed, within 
thirty days after collecting said fine,, 
and take his receipt therefor. All acts 
or parts of acts, in conflict herewith are 
now hereby repealed. 

[Session Laws, 1888-9, Chap. 32, Sec, 
17, provides that] prosecuting officers- 
are to make no charge against the Terri- 
tory for cases of violation of the Sun- 
day law. § 934. It shall be lawful in cases 
of necessity for farmers and gardeners to 
irrigate their lands, and, when neces- 
sary to preserve the same, to remove 
grain and other products, from the 
fields on said day ; and nothing in this 
act shall be construed to prevent cooks, 
waiters, and other employees of hotels 
and restaurants, and the butchers and 
bakers, from perfoi^iiing their duties 
on said day. § 935. No civil process 
shall be issued or served on said day, 
except in case of capias, attachment, 
or replevin, when the plaintiff, or his 
agent, shall make oath that he is in 
danger of being subject to loss or seri- 
ous inconvenience unless process shall 
be issued or served on said day. In all 
other cases, any civil process issued, or 



95 



96 



the service thereof, on said day, shall be 
void. § 936. Sunday, for the purposes 
of this act, shall be regarded as the 
time betAveeii sunrise and mid- 
night of said day. § 937. "Witnesses 
attending to testify on the part of the 
Territory, under the provisions of this 
act, shall be entitled to receive two dol- 
lars for each day's attendance, and the 
mileage provided by law, to be taxed as 
other costs. § 938. It is hereby made 
tlie duty of the attorney general 
and district attorneys, to prose- 
cute offenders against the provisions 
of this act, and they shall be entitled to 
receive a fee of five dollars, for each 
conviction, to be taxed as other costs. 



New York. — Penal Code, as amend- 
ed, 1883, 1887. Title X.— Op Crimes 
against the person and against 
Public Decency and Good Morals. 
Chap. I. — Of Crimes against Religious 
Liberty and Conscience. % 259. The 
first day of the w||ek being, by general 
consent, set apart for rest and religious 
uses, the law prohibits the doing on that 
day of certain acts hereinafter specified, 
which are serious interruptions of the 
repose and religious -liberty of the com- 
munity. § 260. A violation of the fore- 
going prohibition is Sabbath breaking. 
§261. Under the term "day," as em- 
ployed in the phrase "first day of the 
week," when used in this chapter, is in- 
cluded all the time from midnight to 
midnight. 

§ 263. All labor on Sunday is pro- 
hibited, excepting works of necessity or 
charity. In works of necessity or 
charity is included whatever is needful 
during the day for the good order, health 
or comfort of the community. § 264. It 
is a sufficient defense to a prosecution 
for servile labor on the first day of the 
week, that the defendant uniformly 
keeps another day of the week as 
holy time, and does not labor upon that 
day, and that the labor complained of 
was done in such a manner as not to 
interrupt or disturb other persons in 
observing the first day of the week as 
holy time. 



§ 265. All shooting, hunting, fishing, 
playing, horse racing, gaming, or other 
public sports, exercises or shows, upon 
the first day of the week, and all noise 
disturbing the peace of the day, are pro- 
hibited. § 266. All trades, manufac- 
tures, agricultural or mechanical em- 
ployments, upon the first day of the 
week are prohibited, except that when 
the same are works of necessity they 
may be performed on that day in their 
usual and orderly manner, so as not to 
interfere with the repose and religious 
liberty of the community. § 267. All 
manner of public selling or offering 
for sale of any property upon Sunday 
is prohibited, except that articles of 
food may be sold and supplied at any 
time before 10 o'clock in the morning, 
and except also that meals may be sold 
to be eaten on the premises where sold 
or served elsewhere by caterers ; and 
prepared tohacco in places other than 
where spirituous or malt liquors or 
wines are kept or offered for sale, and 
f r u i t , confectionery, news- 
papers, drugs, medicines, and surgi- 
cal appliances may be sold in a quiet 
and orderly manner at any time of the 
day. 

§ 268. All service of legal process, 
of any kind whatever, upon the first day 
of the week, is prohibited, except in 
cases of breach of the peace, or appre- 
hended breach of the peace, or when 
sued out for the apprehension of a per- 
son charged with crime, or except where 
such service is specially authorized by 
statute. 

§ 269 [as amended June 6, 1887]. 
Sabbath breaking is a misdemeanor, 
punishable by a fine not less than $5 
and not more than $10, or toy im- 
prisonment ,in a county jail not ex- 
ceeding five days, or by both ; but for 
a second offense, wh-ere the party 
shall have been previously convicted, it 
shall be punishable by a fine not less 
than $10 and not more than $20 and 
imprisonment in a county jail not 
less than five nor more than twenty 
days. 

§ 270. In addition to the penalty im- 
posed by the last section, all property 



97 



and commodities exposed for 

sale oa the first day of the week, in 
violation of the pi-ovisions of this chap- 
ter, shall be l€H'leite<l. Upon convic- 
tion of the offender by a justice of the 
peace of a county, or hy any police jus- 
tice or magistrate, or by a mayor, re- 
corder or alderman of a city, such officer 
shall issue a warrant for tlie seizure of 
the forfeited articles, which, when 
seized, shall be sold on one day's notice, 
and the proceeds paid to the overseers 
of the poor for the use of the poor, of 
the town or citj'. 

§ 271. Whoever maliciousty procures 
any process in a civil action to be 
served on Saturday, upon any per- 
son who keeps Satur<lay as a holy 
time, and does not labor on that day, 
or serves upon him anj^ process returna- 
ble upon that day, or maliciously pro- 
cures any civil action to which such 
person is a party to be adjourned to that 
<Iay for trial, is guilty of a misdemeanor. 

§ 276. All processions and pa- 
rades on Sunday in an^'^ city, excepting 
only funeral processions for the actual 
burial of the dead, and processions to 
and from a place of worship in connec- 
tion with a religious service there cele- 
brated, are forbidden ; and in such ex- 
cepted cases there shall be no music, 
fireworks, discharge of cannon or fire- 
arms, or other disturbing noise. At a 
militarj^ funeral, and at the burial of a na- 
tional guardsman, or of a deceased mem- 
ber of an association of veteran soldiers, 
or of a disbanded militia regiment, 
nuisic may be played while escorting 
the body, but not within one block of a 
place of worship where service is then 
celebrated. A person willfully violating 
any provisions of this section is punish- 
able by a fine not exceeding ^20 
or imprisonment not exceeding ten 
days, or both. 

§ 277. The performance of any trag- 
edy, comedy, opera, ballet, farce, negro 
minstrelsy, negro or other dancing, 
wrestling, boxing, with or without 
gloves, sparring contest, trial of 
strength, or any part or parts therein, 
or any circus, eciuestrian or dramatic 
performance <>y exercise, or any per- 



formance or exercise of jugglers, acro- 
bats, club performances or rope dancers 
on the fh-st day of tlie week is forbidden; 
and every pcrs€>n aiding in such 
exhibition, performance or exercise 
by advertisement, posting or otherwise, 
and every oivner or lessee of any 
garden, building or other room, place 
or structure, who leases or lets the 
same for the purpose of any such 
exhibition, performance or exercise, or 
who assents to the use of the same for 
any such purpose, if it be so used, is 
guilty of a misdemeanor. In addi- 
tion to the punishment therefor pro- 
vided by statute, every person violating 
this section is subject to a penalty 
of $500, which penalty " The 
Society for the Reformation of 
Juvenile Deliii«|ucnts," in the 
city of New York, for the use of 
that society, and the overseers of the 
poor in any other city or town, for the 
use of tl«e poor, are autliorized, in 
the name of the people of the State, to 
recover. Besides this penalty, every 
such exhibition, performance or exer- 
cise, of itself, * annuls any license 
which may have been previously ob- 
tained by the manager, superintendent, 
agent, owner, or lessee, using or letting 
such building, garden, room, place or 
other structure, or consenting to such 
exhibition, performance or exercise. 

Ch. 549, § 5. * * * * No inn, 
tavern, or hotel keeper, or other person 
shall sell or give away intoxicating 
liquors or wines on Sunday * * * 
to any person whatever, as a beverage. 

Whoever shall offend against the pro- 
vision of this section shall be guilt}^ of a 
misdemeanor, and shall be punished 
for each offense by a fine of not less 
than 830 nor more than $200, or by 
imprisonment not less than five days 
nor more than fifty days, or both such 
fine and imprisonment at the discretion 
of the court. 

[Editor's Note. — See Comments on 
New York law on pp. 5, 6.] 

Decisions (on each section in order.) — 
§261. Pulling V. People, 8 Barb., 384. 
Vanderweiker v. People, 5 Wend., 530. 
^2()o. Works of necessity are excepted 



98 



by the statute. Sun Pub. Co. v. Tribune 
Ass., 12 J. & Sp., 136. Parmalee v. 
Wilkes, 22 Barb., 539. §264. Isaacs 
V. Beth Hemedash Soc, 1 Hilt., 469. 
Maxson v. Annas, 1 Den., 204. § 265. 
The Laws of 1815 prohibiting fishing 
in the Hudson on Sunday. Sickles v. 
Sharp, 13 Johns, 497. It is no defense 
to an action for a personal liBJairy that 
the parties were at the time practising 
an unlawful game on Sunday. Etchberg 
V. Levielle, 2 Hilt., 40. § 267. A private 
conlract made on Sunday is valid. 
Boyton v. Paige, 13 Wend., 425. 
Batsfordv. Every, 44 Barb., 618. Eberle 
V. Mehrbach, 55 N. Y., 682. Millers. 
Roessler, 4 E. D. Smith, 234. A con- 
tract for the publication of an adver- 
tisement in a Sunday paper held void 
under former statute. Smith v. Wilcox, 
24 N. Y., 353. Now permitted by the 
Laws of 1871, ch. 702. A contract for 
the liiriiig of a liorsc to be used on 
Sunday for pleasure, cannot be enforced, 
Nodine ^'. Doherty, 36 Barb., 59. But 
the hirer is liable to an action for negli- 
gence, though the contract was made 
on Sunday. Harrison v'. Marshall, 4 E. 
D. Smith, 271. §268. Proce§§ cannot be 
legally issued or served on Sunday. Van 
Vechten v. Paddock, 12 Johns, 178. But- 
ler V. Kelsey, 15 Johns, 177. Nor be made 



returnable. Gould v. Spencer, 5 Paige, 
541 ; Arctic F. Ins. Co. v. Hicks, 7 Abb., 
204. When so served proceedings wiF , 
be set aside. Robb v. Moffatt, 3 Johns, 
257. A defendant cannot legally admit 
service of process on Sunday. Wood v, 
Brooklyn, 14 Barb., 425. An arrest can- 
not be made on Sunday for the violation 
of a municipal ordinance. Wood v. 
Brooklyn, 14 Barb., 425. Service of no- 
tice of motion on Sunday is irregular 
and void. Field v. Park, 20 Johns, 140. 
An award made and pulblislied on 
Sunday is void. Story v. Elliott, 8 Cow., 
27. § 271. Maxson v. Annas, 1 Den., 204. 
§ 277. An agreement to make an ascen- 
sion in a balloon on Sunday from a pub- 
lic garden is within the statute. Brun- 
nett V. Clark, 1 Sheld., 500. 

Recent Decisions, 1885-9. — One who 
on Sunday procures goods by false rep- 
resentations cannot, on that ground, 
escape liability from arrest in a civil 
action, although the law prohibits the 
sale of that class of goods on Sunday. 
O'Shea v. Kohn, 33 Hun (N. Y.) 114. 
(Per contra Cr., 1889.) Where three 
men without noise played ball on pri- 
vate grounds, there was no breach of 
the law. People v. Dennin, 35 Hun (N. 
Y.) 327. 



PETITION FOR AMENDMENT OF STATE SABBATH LAW. 

^a tto %tKtZ JjeiXatje Jat - (Duplicate to House.) 



The undersigned, adult residents of the city (or town) of : .'_ 

hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to so amend our State laws with 
reference to the first day of the week, that, with the exception of works of real 
necessity and mercy, and private work by those who keep Saturday, all toil, and 
traffic and turmoil, whether by railroad or other corporations, or by individuals, 
shall be equitably forbidden and vigorously suppressed, and so our State enjoy the 
oenefits of laws on this subject as good or better than the best. 



SABBATH LAWS OF NORTH C 

North Carolina.— § 201. No person 
shall be arrested on Sunday. § 348, 
The time within which an act is to be 
done, as herein provided, shall be eoin- 
plited by excluding the first day and in- 
cluding the last. If the las t day be Sunday, 
it shall be excluded. §1115. Ifanj^person 
whomsoever shall be known to hunt on 
the Lord's Day, commonly called Sun- 
day, with a dog or dogs, having a shot 
gun, rifle or pistol, every person so 
offending shall be subject to indictment; 
and shall pay a fine not to exceed $50, 
at the discretion of the court, two- 
tliirds of such fine to enm^e to the 
beuefit of the free public schools 
in the county, the remainder to the 
informant. §1116. It shall be unlaw- 
ful for any person to fish on Sunday 
^vith a seine, drag net or other kind of 
net, except such as are fastened to 
stakes; and any person violating this 
section shall be guilty of a misde- 
meanor, and fined not less than $200 
nor more than $500, or impri- 
soned not more than twelve months. 
[See exception below.] §1117. If any 
person shall sell spirituous, or malt, or 
other intoxicating liquors on Sunday, 
except on the prescription of a physi- 
cian, and then only for medical purposes, 
the person so offending shall be guilty 
of a misdemeanor, and punished by 
fine^ or imprisonment, or both, in 
the discretion of the court. § 1973. 
No railroad company shall permit 
the loading or unloading of any 
freig[lit car on Sunday; nor shall 
permit any car, train of cars, or loco- 
motive to be run on Sunday on any rail- 
road, except such as may be run for the 
purpose of transporting the United States 
mails, either with or without pas- 
sengers, and except such as shall be run 
for carrying passengers exclusively, 
and except such as shall be run for the 
purpose of transporting fruits, vege- 
tables, live stock and perishable 
freights exclusively : Provided, that the 



4R0LINA AND BOTH DAKOTAS. 

word Sunday in this section shall be con- 
strued to embrace only that portion of 
day between sunrise and sunset ; and 
tliat trains in transitu, havingstarted 
on Saturday, ma}^, in order to reach the 
terminus or shops, run until nine 
o'clock, A. M. on Sunday, but not 
later, nor for any other purpose than to 
reach the terminus or shops. And any 
railroad company violating this section 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor 
in each county in which car, train of 
cars or locomotive shall run, or in which 
any such freight car shall be loaded or 
unloaded ; and upon conviction shall be 
fined not less than $500 for each offense, 
the fme when collected to be paid to the 
State Treasm-er for the use of the 
public schoolSo—Counties of Car- 
teret and Onslow exempt from § 1116. 
Justices Jurisdiction — punishment 
not exceed fine of $50 or imprison- 
ment for thirty days. 



North Dakota.— § 6238. The first day 
of the week being by very general consent 
set apart for rest and religious uses, the 
law forbids to be done on that day cer- 
tain acts deemed useless and serious in- 
terruptions of the repose and religious lib- 
erty of the community. § 6239. Any viola- 
tion of this prohibition is Sabbath break- 
ing. §6240. Under the term *'day" as 
employed in the phrase ** first day of the 
week," in the seven sections following, 
is included all the time from midnight 
to midnight. §6241. The following 
are the acts forbidden to be done on the 
first day of the week, the doing any of 
which is Sabbath breaking : 1. Servile 
labor; 2. Public sports, 3. Trades, 
manufactures and mechanical employ- 
ments ; 4. Public traffic; 5. Serving 
process. § 6242. All manner of ser- 
vile labor on the first day of the week is 
prohibited, excepting works of necessity 
or charity. § 6243. It is a sufficient de-- 
fense in proceedings for servile labor on 
the first day of the week to show that 



Add North C'arolina. Sec. 3782. No person to work on Sunday, under penally of one dollar. On the 
Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday, no tradesman, artificer, planter, laborer, or other person, shall, upon 
land or \vater, d') or exereise any labor, Inisiness or work of his ordinary calling, works of necessity and 
charity alone excepted, nor employ himself in hnntint;. fishinfj or fowling, nor nse nny game, sport or play, 
uiK)n pain that every perpon so offending, being of the age of fourteen years and ny)wards, shall forfeit aiid 
I)ay one dollar. Sec. 3783 forbids hiintimr; fine, fiftv dollars. Sec. 3'J84-6 provides for pavmcnt of 'oto 
due Snndav on Mondav, etc. 



100 



the accused uniformly keeps anotlier 

day of the week as holy time ; that the 
labor complained of was done in such 
manner as not to. interrupt or disturb 
other persons in observing the first day 
of the week as holy time. ^ 6244. All 
shooting, sporting, horse racing, gam- 
ing- or other public sports, upon the first 
day of the week, are prohibited. § 6245. 
All trades, manufactures and mechani- 
cal employments upon the first day of 
the week, are prohibited. § 6246. All 
manner of public selling, or offering, or 
exposing for sale publicly, of any com- 
modities upon the first day of the week, 
is prohibited, except that meats, 
milk and fish, may be sold at any time 
before nine o'clock in the morning and 
except that food may be sold to be eaten 
upon the premises where sold, a^nd drugs 
and medicines and surgical appliances 
may be sold at any time of the day. 
§ 6247. All service of legal process of any 
description whatever, upon the first day 
of the week, is prohibited, except in cases 
of breach of the peace, or apprehended 
breach of the peace, etc.. § 6248. Every 
person guilty of Sabbath breaking is pun- 
ishable by a fine of $1 for each offense. 
§ 6250. Whoever maliciously procures 
any process in a civil action to be 
served on Saturday upon any person 
who keeps Saturday as holy time, 
or serves upon him any process return- 
able on that day, or maUciously pro- 
cures any civil action to which such per- 
son is a party to be adjourned to that 
day for trial, is guilty of a misdemeanor. 



Ohio.— § 7032a. Whoever on the first 
day of the week, commonly called Sun- 
day, participates in or exhibits to the 
public, with or without charge for ad- 
mittance, in any building, room, ground, 
garden or other place in this State, any 
tkeatrical or dramatical performance 
pf any kind or description, or any 
equestrian or circus performance of jug- 
glers, acrobats, rope dancing, sparring 
exhibitions, variety shows, negro min- 
strelsy, living statuary, ballooning, or 
any base ball playing, or any ten- 
pins, or other games of similar kind or 
kinds, or participates in keeping any low 



or disorderly house or isesort, or shall 
sell, dispose of, or give away any ale, 
beer, porter or spirituous liquors in 
any building appendant or adjacent 
thereto, when any such show, perform- 
ance or exhibition is given, or houses or 
places is kept he or she shall, on com- 
plaint made within twenty days there- 
after, be fined in any sum not exceeding 
$100, or be confined in the county 
jail not exceeding six months, or both. 
§ 7033. Whoever, being over four- 
teen years of age, engages in com- 
mon labor on Sunday (works of 
necessity and charity excepted) shall 
on complaint made within ten days 
thereafter be fined not more than $5, 
but this section does not extend to 
those who conscientiously observe the 
seventli day of the week as the Sab- 
bath, nor shall it be construed so as to 
prevent families emiigrating from 
traveling, watermen from landing 
their passengers, superintendents or 
keepers of toll bridges or toll gates 
from attending the same, or ferrymen 
from conveying travelers over waters. 
[61 v., 104, 29 v., 161; Sec. 14.] § 3176. If 
the third day of grace be the first day 
of the week, the demand of payment 
from maker of any bond, note, etc., 
shall be made on the next preceding 
business day. § 3177. If the first day of 
January be the first day of the week, the 
succeeding Monday shall, for the same 
purpose, be considered as the first day 
of the week. § 4951. Unless otherwise 
specially provided the time within which 
an act is required by law to be done 
shall be computed by excluding 
the first day and including the last, 
and if the last be Sunday it shall be 
excluded. [51 v., 57, Sec. 597.] §5458. 
No person shall be arrested on 
the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday. This does not extend to 
crimes, etc. § 7032. Whoever, being- 
over fourteen years of age, engages 
in sporting, rioting, quarreling, 
liunting, flsliing' or shooting on Sun- 
day shall, on complaint made within 
ten days thereafter, be fined not more 
than f 20, or imprisoned not more 
than twenty days, or both. 



Ohio.— § 8092.— 18. That the sale of intoxicating liquors, whether distilled, malt or vinous, on the first 
day of the Meek, commonly called Sunday, except by a regular druggist on the written prescription of a 
regular practicing physician for medical purposes onfy, is hereby declared to be unlawful, and all places 
where such intoxicating liquors are on other days sold, or exposed for sale, except regular drug stores, 
shall on that day be closed, and whoever makes anj^ such sale, oi allows any such place to be open or remain 
open en that day, shall be fined in any sum not exceediug one hundred dollars, and not less Ihan twenty- 
five dollars, and be imprisoned in the county jail or city prison not less than ten days and not exceeding 
thirty days. In regular hotels and eating houses the word "■ p)ace" herein used shail be held to mean the 
room or part of room w here such liquors are usually sold or exposed for sale, and the keeping of such room 
or part of room securely closed shall be held, as to such hotels and eating houses as a closing of the place in 
the meaning of this act. 

SABBATH LAWS OF OREGON AND PENNSYLVANIA. 



Oregon, — § 1909. No person shall 
keep open aiw house or room in 
which intoxicating liquor is kept for 
retail on the first clay of the week, com- 
monly called Sunday, or give or sell or 
otherwise dispose of intoxicating liquors 
on that day. Any person violating this 
section shail be fined in any sum not ex- 
ceeding ^25 nor less than $10 for each 
offense ; such fine to be for the use of 
conimon sc'liools; provided, that this 
section, so far as it prohibits keeping 
open a house or room, sliall not apply 
to tavern keepers. § 1569. If the 
crime cliarged be a felony the arrest 
may be made on any day ; but if it 
be a misdemeanor, the arrest can- 
not be made on a Sunday, unless 
upon the direction of tlie magistrate, 
indorsed upon the warrant. § 1896. If 
any person shall serve or execute any 
civil process on a Sunday or tlie Lord's 
Day, such service shall be void, and such 
person, upon conviction thereof, shall 
be punished by a fine not less than $5 nor 
more than ^50. § 1890. If any person 
shall keep open any store, shop, 
grocery, ball alley, billiard room or 
tippling house for purpose of labor or 
traffic, or any place of amusement, on 
the first day of the week, commonly 
called Sunday or the Lord's Day, such 
person, upon conviction thereof, shall 
be punished by a fine not less than $5 or 
more than ^50; provided, that the 
above provision shall not apply to the 
keepers of clrug^ stores, doctor shops, 
undertakers, livery stable 
keepers, barbers, biitcliers^ and 
bakers ; and all circumstances of ne- 
cessity and mercy may be pleaded in 
defense, which shall be treated asques- 
ti€>ns of fact for the jury to deter- 
mine when the offense is tried by a jury. 



Pennsylvania.— (Sunday) §1. No per- 
son or persons, upon the first day of the 
week, shall serve or execute, or caused 
to be served or executed, any Avril, 



precept, warrant, order, judgment or 
decree, except in case of treason, felony 
or breach of the peace ; but the serving 
of any such writ, precept, warrant, 
order, judgment or decree shall be void, 
to all intents and purposes whatsoever ; 
and the person or persons so serving or 
executing' the same shall be as liable to 
the suit of the party grieved and to 
answer damages to him for doing there- 
of, as if he or they had done the 
same without any writ, precept, warrant 
or order, judgment or decree at all. 
§ 3. No part of anj^ act of assembly here- 
tofore passed, shall be construed to 
require any canal or railroad com- 
pany to attend their works on the Sab- 
bath days, for the purpose of expediting 
or aiding the passage of any boat, craft 
or vehicle along the same ; any clause 
or clauses in their respective charters, 
imposing a penalty for not aiding boats, 
crafts or vehicles to pass within a certain 
time, to the contrary notwithstanding. 
§ 3. If any person shall do or perform 
any Avorldly einploynient or bus- 
iness whatsoever on the Lord's Day, 
commonly called Sunday (works of ne- 
cessity and charity only excepted), shall 
use or practice any unlawful g^anie, 
liuntinif , shooting, sport or diversion 
whatsoever on the same day, and be 
convicted thereof, every such person 
so ofl'ending shall, for every such 
ofl:ense, forfeit and pay $4 to be levied 
by distress ; or in case he or she shall 
refuse or neglect to pay the said sum, 
or goods and chattels cannot be 
found, whereof to levy the same by 
distress, he or she shall suffer six days' 
imprisonment in tlie house of correction 
of the proper county. Provided, always, 
that nothing herein contained shall be 
construed to prohibit the dressing of 
victuals in private families, bake- 
houses, lodging houses, inns and other 
houses of entertainment for the use of 
sojourners, travelers or strangers, or to 
liindor watermen from landing their 



103 



passengers, or ferrymen from carrying 
over the water travelers, or persons 
removing" with their families on the 
Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday, 
nor to the dehvery of mlllt or tlie 
necessaries of life, before nine 
of tlie clock in the forenoon, 
nor after five of the clock in the 
afternoon of the same day. § 4. Pro- 
vided, always, that every such prose- 
cntiosi shall be commenced within 
scvcnty-t^wo liours after tlie offense 
shall be committed. § 5. All persons 
who are found drinking and tippling 
in ale houses, taverns, or other public 
house or place, on the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunday, or any 
part thereof, shall, for every offense, 
forfeit and pay one §liilling and six 
pence to any constable that shall de- 
mand the same to the use of the poor ; 
and all constables are hereby em- 
powered, and by virtue of their office 
required, to search public houses and 
places suspected to entertain such tip- 
plers, and then, when found, quietly to 
disperse ; but in case or refusal, to bring 
the persons so refusing before the next 
justice of the peace, who may commit 
such offenders to the stocks, or bind 
them to their good behavior, as to him 
shall seem requisite. And the keepers 
of such ale houses, taverns or other 
public house or place as shall counte- 
nance or tolerate any such practices, 
being convicted thereof by the view of 
a single nriagistrate, his own confession, 
or the proof of one or more credible wit- 
nesses, shall, for every offense, forfeit 
and pay ten sliilling'S, to be recovered 
as and for the uses above said. § 6. Pro- 
vided, always, that nothing in this act 
be construed to prevent victualling 
houses, or other public house or place 
from supplying the necessary occasions 
of travelers, inmates, lodgers or others, 
on the first day of the week, with vict- 
uals and drink in moderation, for re- 
freshment only ; of which necessary 
occasion for refreshment, as also mod- 
eration, the magistrate before whom 
complaint is made shall be judge ; any 
law, usage or custom in this province to 
the contrary notwithstanding. §7. It 



shall not be lawful for any person or 
persons to sell, trade or barter in any 
spirituous or malt liqnors, wine or 
cider on the first day of the week, com- 
monly called Sunday ; or for the keeper 
or keepers of any hotel, inn, tavern, ale 
house, beer house, or other public house 
or place knowingly to allow or permit 
any spirituous or malt liquors, wine or 
cider, to be drank on or within the prem- 
ises or house occupied or kept by such 
keeper or keepers, his, her, or their 
agents or servants, on the said first day of 
the week. § 8. Any person or persons 
violating the provisions of the foregoing 
section, shall, for each and every offense, 
forfeit and pay the sum of $50^ one- 
la alf of which shall be paid to tliepro- 
s editor, and the other half to the guar- 
dians of tlie poor of the city or county 
in which suit is brought, or in the 
counties having no guardians of the 
poor, then to the overseers of the poor 
of the township, ward or borough in 
which the offense was committed ; to be 
recovered before any ma^or, alderman, 
burgess or justice of the peace, as debts 
of like amount are now Ijy law recover- 
able, in any action of debt brought in 
the name of the commonwealth, as well 
for the use of the guardians of the poor 
(or for the overseers of the poor of the 
township, ward or borough, as the case 
may be) as for the person suing : pro- 
vided, that when any prosecutor is him- 
self a witness, on any trial under the 
provisions of this section, then the 
whole penalty of forfeiture shall be paid 
to the guardians or overseers as afore- 
said ; and provided further, that it 
shall be a misdemeanor in office, for any 
such mayor, alderman, burgess or jus- 
tice of the peace, to neglect to render to 
the said guardians of the poor and 
prosecutor the amount of such penalty, 
within ten days from the payment of the 
same. § 9. In addition to the 
civil penalties imposed by the last 
preceding section, for violation of the 
provisions of the first section of this 
act, every person who shall violate the 
provisions of that section, shall be 
taken and deemed to have committed a 
misdemeanor, and shall, on convic- 



103 



tion thereof, in any criminal court in 
the commonwealth, be fined in any 
sum not less than $10, nor more than 
^1^0, and be imprisoned in the 
county jail for a period not less than 
ten, nor more than sixty days, at the 
discretion of the court. § 10. All 
penalties, fines and forfeitures imposed, 
incurred or paid, under the act to which 
it is a supplement, except so far as part 
thereof is paj^able to the prosecutor 
shall be paid over to the guardians, 
■directors or other representatives of the 
poor of the city, district or county in 
which the offense was committed. § 17. 
There shall be no lfi£fl2itii!Qg^ or shooting 
or fi§lilii^ on the first day of tlie week, 
called Sunday, and any person offend- 
ing against the provisions of this sec- 
tion shall be liable to a penalty of $25, 
§ 24. It shall not be lawful for any per- 
son, with or without license, to furnish 
b}^ sale or gift or otherwise to any per- 
son any spirituous, vinous, malt or 
brewed liquors, on any day upon 
which elections are now or hereafter 
may be required to be held, nor on Sun- 
day, nor at any time to a minor or a 
person of known intemperate habits, or 
a person visibly affected by intoxicat- 
ing drink, either for his or her use, 
or for the use of any other person, 
or to sell or furnish liquors to any per- 
son on a pa§§-B>oo3i. or ordor on a 
store, or to receive from a person any 
Ij^oods, wares, merchandise or provi- 
sions in cxclian^^c for liquors, shall be 
held and deemed a misdemeanor, and 
upon conviction thereof the offender 
shall be fined not less than $50 nor 
more than $500, and undergo an im- 
prisonment of not less than twenty nor 
more than ninety da3-s. 

Decisions. — The ofT-ense of ^vorkiiig^ 
on Sunday, does not amount to a breach 
of the peace. Commonwealth v. Eyre, 
I. S. & R., 350. Unless it be carried on 
in public, and in such a manner as to 
disturb those who keep it as a day of 
rest and religious observance. Thus, 
the crying of newspapers in tlie 
Y^ublic streets on Sunday is a breach 
of the peace. Commonwealth t?, Tea- 
mann, 1 Phila., 460. And so is the dri- 



vings of a public conveyance as a 

passenger car for hire. Commonwealth 
V. Jeandell, 2 Gr., 536. See s. c. 3 Phila., 
509. But tlie pilot who, in the discharge 
of his ordinary occupation, pilots a 
canal boat on that day, is liable for the 
penalty. The canal company is not 
required to stop travel upon their works 
on Sunday, though relieved from any 
penalty for so doing. Scully v. Com- 
monwealth, 35 Penn. St., 511. This act 
is binding o*n J^e^vs and others who 
keep the seventh day as their Sabbath. 
Commonwealth v. WoU, 3 S. & R., 48. 
Specht V. Commonwealth, 8 Penn. St. 
312. As a civil and political institution 
the establishment and regulation of the 
Sunday, is within the just powers of the 
civil government. Lindenmuller v. 
People, 33 Barb., 548. The acts in favor 
of fiiberty of conscience are not in- 
consistent with the Sunday laws ; 
these are not intended to enforce relig'ion, 
but to protect the social customs of the 
people. Commonwealth v. Nesbit, 34 
Penn. St., 368. Driving a public con- 
veyance for the transportation of 
passengers, is not a work of necessity. 
The traveling which is not forbidden, is 
that by private conveyance. Johnston 
V. Commonwealth, 22 Penn. St., 102 ; 
Sparliawk^). Union Passenger Railway 
Co., 54 Ibid, 401. The act embraces 
every kind of ^vorldly employ- 
Buent, whether in the exercise of a per- 
son's ordinary calling or not. Kepner v. 
Keefer, 6 W., 522 ; Johnston v. Com- 
monwealth, 22 Penn. St., 102. The busi- 
ness of a foarber in shaving his cus- 
tomers on Sunday morning is within the 
prohibition. Commonwealth v. Jacobus, 
1 Leg. Gaz. R., 491; Commonwealth?;. 
Williams, 1 Pears, 61. And a con- 
tract for the publication of an acli^er- 
tisemccU in a ncAVspapcr to be is- 
sued and sold on Sunday, is void. 
Smith V. Wilcox, 21 N. Y., 353. The 
selling of goods out of a party's store on 
Sunday, renders him liable for a sepa- 
rate penally fi>r cacli act of selJ- 
ing to a different customer. 
Reiff V. Commonwealth, 42 Leg. Ing., 
90 ; Duncan v. Commonwealth, Pears, 
213. A licen.sed inn keeper who sells 



104 



ice cream to others than sojourners, 
travelers or strangers, is within excep- 
tion in § 3. Commonwealth v. Bosch, 
15 W. N. C, 316. Selling liquor to a 
traveler, on Sunday, is a violation of 
the Act of 1794. Omit v. Common- 
wealth, 21 Penn. St., 426; and also see 
Commonwealth v. Naylor, S4: IhicL, 86; 
Commonwealth -u. Bosch, 15W.N.C.,316. 
Recent Decisions.— It is the "per- 
forming any worldly employment or 
business " on Sunday that Pennsylvania 
act of April 22, 1794, prohibits. One 
who keeps his shop open and makes 
several distinct sales to different per- 
sons, is guilty of but one oifense and 
liable to but one fine. Friedeborn v. 
Commonwealth, 113 Pa. St., 242; S. C. 
57 Am. Rep., 464. A baker kept his shop 
open on Sunday and sold ice cream and 



cakes, Held, that he was properly con- 
victed under statutes making it an of-- 
fense to perform worldly employment 
and business on Sunday. Appeal of 
Burry, 1 Pa. Sup. Ct. Cas. 80. 

A Sunday Law provided that prosecu- 
tions should be commenced within 
seventy-two hours after the offense was 
committed. A case stated, filed eight 
years after the time of the commission 
of the alleged offense, provided that if 
the court should deem the act alleged a 
violation of the statutes, " if the suit 
had been brought in proper time," then^ 
judgment to be entered for the com- 
monwealth, otherwise for defendant. 
Held, that a writ of error to a judgment 
entered for defendant, should be 
quashed. Com. v. Keithan, 1 Pa. Sup.^ 
Ct. Cas. 368. 



[Headings of State Petition, when Efforts are made to Weaken the Sabbath Laws.] 

gxr tltje ^tatje Jjetxatje 0f - 



The undersigned, citizens of the town or city of.. 



respectfully represent that great advantages have accrued to the public and 
private interests of the people of this State, from the operation of the laws upon 
our statute books in relation to the observance of the first day of the week, and 
they, therefore, pray your honorable body that no act be passed that will in any 
way impair the efficiency of the laws whicli now secure to the toiler his needed 
weekly rest. 



OCCUPATIONS. 



gxr tlxje g^xrwsje 



The undersigned, citizens of the town or city of 

respectfully represent that great advantages have accrued to the public and 
private interests of the people of this State, from the operation of the laws upoiL 
our statute books in relation to the observance of the first day of the wee.v, and 
they, therefore, pray your honorable body that no act be passed that will in any 
way impair the efficiency of the laws which now secure to the toiler his needed 
weekly rest. 



OCCUPATIONS. 



SABBATH LAWS OF RHODE ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE 

AND TEXAS. 



Rhode Island.— Ch. 87, § 25. If any 
person shall at any time offer to sell, 
sell or suffer to be sold by any person, 
by sample or otherwise, any ale, wine, 
rum or other strong or malt liquors, or 
any mixed liquors a part of which is ale, 
wine, rum or other strong or malt 
liquors, in violation of the preceding sec- 
tions of this chapter or any of them, he 
shall be sentenced on the first conviction 
to pay a fine of ^20 and all eosts of 
prosecution and conviction and be im- 
prisoned in the county jail for ten 
days ; on the second conviction he 
shall be sentenced to pay a fine of $50 
and all costs of prosecution and con- 
viction and be imprisoned in the 
county jail three calendar months ; and 
on the third and subsequent con- 
viction he shall be sentenced to pay a 
fine of $100 and all costs of prosecu- 
tion and conviction and be impris- 
oned in the county jail not less than 
tbree months nor more than six calendar 
months. § 26. If any person shall keep 
or suffer to be kept on his premises or 
possessions, or under his charge, for the 
purposes of sale, in violation of the pre- 
ceding sections of this chapter or any of 
them any ale, wine, rum or other strong 
or malt liquors, or any mixed liquors a 
part of which is ale, wine, rum or other 
strong or malt liquors he shaU be fined 
$20 and be imprisoned in the county jail 
ten days. § 31. No sale of the liquors 
enumerated in § 25 and § 26 of this chap- 
ter shall be made on Sunday, except by 
registered pharmacists or registered 
assistant pharmacists upon a physician's 
prescription. * * " Any person who 
shall be convicted of offering to sell, sell- 
ing or suffering to be sold by any person, 
by sample or otherwise, any of the 
hquors enumerated in § 25 and § 26 of 
this chapter on Sunday except as pro- 
vided in this section * •'• •'•' shall be 
fined $20 and be imprisoned in the 
county jail for ten days on tlie first con- 
viction ; and on the second conviction 



he shall be fined $50 and be impris- 
oned in the county jail three months ;: 
and in each case such sale or offer to sell 
on Sunday or on any prohibited days or 
hours as aforesaid shall be made or suf- 
fered to be made by any person holding- 
a license under the provisions of this 
chapter, such license shall be for- 
feited and such person shall be dis- 
qualified to receive a license for 
the sale of intoxicating liquors for the 
period of two years after his conviction. 
§ 57. The mayor or aldermen of any city, 
or the town council of any town, or 
either member thereof, or the chief of 
police of any city or town, or any 
police officer or any constable specially 
authorized by said board of aldermen or 
town council, or any member of State 
police, may at any time enter upon 
tlie premises of any person licensed 
or authorized to sell under the provis- 
ions of this chapter, to ascertain the 
manner in which such person conducts, 
his business and to preserve order ', and 
every such chief or police officer, consta- 
ble or member of the State police shall 
have the power to arrest,*vvithout a war- 
rant, all persons found actually engaged 
in the premises thus entered in the com- 
mission of any offense in violation of 
any of the provisions of this chapter, 
and to keep such persons so arrested in 
custody until they can be brought before 
some magistrate of the same city or 
town (but for a period not to exceed 
twenty-four hours), having the proper 
jurisdiction of such offense, to be dealt 
with according to law ; and whenever 
any person is seen to <trink any in- 
toxicating liquor in such premises or in 
any part thereof on Sunday or on other 
days or hours prohibited under the pro- 
visions of this chapter, it shall be evi- 
dence that such liquors were sold and 
kept for sale by the occupant of such 
premises or his authorized agent. 

Cli. 88, § 3. Town councils may license 
such exhibitions and performances with- 



105 



in their several towns for such ternf not 
exceeding one year and subject to such 
regulations and restrictions as they may 
prescribe ; but no license shall author- 
ize any such exMbition or perform- 
ance to be given on the first day of the 
week. Ch. 90, § 9. No business to be 
transacted by paiwntorokers on the 
first day of the week. Ch. 92, § 3. Every 
person, not being at the time under 
military duty, who shall discharge 
any rifle, musket, fowling-piece, pistol 
or other small arms, * * * shall any- 
where discharge any of such arms on 
Sunday, shall be fined not exceeding $20 
Ch. 208, § 34. No civil process what- 
soever shall be served on Sunday, but 
every such service shall be utterly void. 
Ch. 244, § 15. Every person who shall 
do or exercise any lat>OF or t>usiness 
or work of his ordinary calling, or use 
any game, sport, play or recreation on 
the first day of the week, or suffer the 
same to be done or used by his children, 
servants or apprentices, works of nec- 
essity and charity only excepted, shall 
be fined not exceeding §5 for the 
first offense and $10 for the second 
and every subsequent oflfense. § 16. 
Every person who shall employ, im- 
prove, set to work or encourage the 
servant of any other person to commit 
any act named in the preceding section 
shall suffer thi like punishment. § 17. 
All complaints for violations of the 
provisions of the preceding two sections 
shall be made witliin ten days after 
the committing thereof and not after- 
wards. Ch. 38, § 20. Town councils 
and city councils may make police 
regulations against breakers of the Sab- 
bath. 

Session Laws 1889, Ch. 816, § 24. No 
sale of the liquors enumerated in sec- 
tions 1, 19 and 20 of this chapter shall 
be made on Sunday, except by registered 
pharmacists or registered assistant 
pharmacists upon aphj'^sicians prescrip- 
tion. Any person who shall be con- 
victed, shall be fined $20. § 50. And 
whenever any person is seen to drink 
any intoxicating liquor in such prem- 
ises or in any part thereof on Sunday, it 
shall be evidence that such liquors 
i;vere sold and kept for sale by the occu- 



pant of such premises of his authorized 
agent. § 58. Every person licensed to 
sell intoxicating liquors shall cause to 
be removed on his licensed premises 
all ohstructions of whatever kind 
that may prevent a clear vie^v of the 
interior of the same from the outside 
thereof, by the passer by, through the 
window, during the entire day of each 
Sunday ; and every person violating the 
provisions of this section shall be fined 
$20. 

South Carolina.— § 663. No civil or 
criminal process shall be served on 
Sunday, except for treason, felony or 
breach of the peace. Nor shall any 
female be arrested in any civil action, 
except for a willful injury to persons, 
character or property. §664. It shall be 
lawful for the Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff or 
jailer to retake on Sunday, as on any 
other day, and at Court, muster or any 
other place, any prisoner who has 
escaped. § 1475. It shall be unlawful 
for any railroad corporation owning 
or controlling railroads operating in this 
State to load or unload, or permit to be 
loaded or unloaded, or to run or permit 
to be run, on Sunday, any locomotive, 
cars or train of cars, moved by steam 
power, except as hereinafter provided, 
and except to unload cars loaded with 
animals. § 1476. It shall be lawful for 
said corporations or persons to run on 
said day, during the months of April, 
May, June, July and August, trains 
laden exclusively with vegetahles and 
fruits, and on said day in any and 
every month, their regular mail trains 
and such construction or other trains 
rendered necessary by extraordinary 
emergencies, other than those 
incident to freight or passenger 
traffic, and such freight trains as 
may be in transitu which can reach their 
destination by six o'clock A. M. 

§ 1477. It shall be lawful for any train 
running by a schedule in conformity with 
the provisions of this chapter, but de- 
layed by accident or other unavoida- 
ble circumstance to be run until it 
reaches the point at which it is usual for 
it to rest upon a Sunday. § 1478. For a 
wilful violation of the provisions of sec- 



Rhode Island allows Saturday-keepers in Hopkinton and Wes'.erley to do all kinds of Sunday work. 



107 



I 



tions 1475, 1476, and 1477 of tins cliaplGr, 
the railroad company so offending' shall 
forfeit to the State ^500, to be collect- 
ed in any court of competent jurisdic- 
tion. 

§ 1631 . No tradesman, artificer, work- 
man, laborer or other person whatsoever, 
shall do o.' exercise any worldly Datoor, 
business, or work of their ordinary 
callings upon the Lord's Day (common- 
ly called the Sabbath), or any part 
thereof (works of necessity or charity 
only excepted) ; and every person, being- 
of the age of flfteeii yeaF§ or «p- 
\rarcls, offending in the premises, shall, 
for every such offense, forfeit the sum of 
^1. § 1632. No person or persons what- 
soever shall publiclj^ cr;-, show forth, or 
expose to saBe any wares, merchan- 
dise, fruit, herbs, goods, or chattels what- 
soever, upon the Lord's Day, or anj^ part 
thereof, upon pain that every person 
so offending shall forfeit the same 
goods so cried, or showed forth, or ex- 
posed to sale. §1633. No public sports 
or pastimes, as bear-baiting, bull-bait- 
ing, foot-ball playingjhorse-racing, inter- 
ludes, or common plays, or other games, 
exercises, sports, oi pastimes whatso- 
ever, shall be used on the Lord's Day 
by any person or persons whatsoever ; 
and every pereon or persons offend- 
ing in any of the premises shall for- 
feit for every offense the sum of $1, 
§ 2592. Whoever shall keep, or suffer 
to be kept, any gaming table, or permit 
any game or games to be plaA^ed 
in his, her, or their houses, on the Sab- 
bath day, such person or persons, on 
conviction tliereof before any Court hav- 
ing jurisdiction, shall be fined in the sum 
of $»50, to be sued for on behalf of, and 
to be recovered for, the use of the State. 



South Dakota. — Same as North 
Dakota. 



Tennessee.— § 2289. If any merchanl, 
artificer, tradesman, farmer or other 
person shall be guilty of doing or exer- 
cising any of the eoiniiioii avoea- 
tioitsof life, or of causing or permitting 
the same to be done by his children or 
servants, acts of real necessity or charity 



excepted, on Sunday, he shall, on due 
conviction thereof before any justice of. 
the peace of the county", forfeit and pay 
^3, one-lialf to tlie person \^iao 
wSII sue for tBie same, the other half 
for the use of the county. 

[Decision : Bartering on Sunday 
may subject the barber to the penalty 
proscribed, but is not indictable either 
as a nuisance or a misdemeanor. 7Bax., 
95.] §2290. Any person who shall Iiunt, 
fis2i or play at any game of sport, or 
be druuk on Sunday, as aforesaid, 
shall be f ^ j^^t to the same proceedings 
and liable to the same penalties as 
those who work on the Sabbath. § 46. 
The time within which any act provided 
bylaw is to be done, shall be computed 
by excluding the first day and including 
the last, unless the last day is Sunday, 
and then it also shall be excluded. § 5C71. 
No licensed grocer or other person :n 
this State shall retail spiritous liquors 
on Sunday. The punishment of this 
offense shall be fine and imprison- 
ment at the discretion of the court. 

Laws of 1889, Ch. 31.— §1. The law 
of this State prohibiting the sale of 
liquor on Sunday as compiled in section 
5671, is so amended as to prohibit the 
sale on Sunday of any malt, vinous, 
fermented or other intoxicating liq- 
uors, or to kei'p open on Sunday 
any place where such liquors are sold or 
dispensed, and any person offending 
shall be pui jshcd as provided in said 
act ; provided that the provisions of 
this act shall not apply to druggists 
selling on tlic prescription of a practic- 
ing physici. i ; provided, further, that 
restaurants and eating houses where 
spirituous, vinous and malt liquors are 
sold under the license law of the State 
on week days, shall be allowed to con- 
duct their eating department on Sun- 
day, but the bar room shall be closed, 
and no drinks of any kind sold. 

§ 3."y29. Civil process may be issued 
on tin Sabbath, on the application of 
any party, supported by oaf li or affirma- 
tion, tliat the defendant is removing, etc. 
§ 3012. Actions may be abated by plea 
of the defendant in the following cas(! : 
Where the process is issued or served 



108 



on Sunday, except in the cases pre- 
scribed in section 2529. 



Texas. — Art. 183. Any person who 
shall hereafter lal»or, or compel, force, 
or obhg-e his employees, workman, or 
apprentices to labor, on Sunday, or any 
person who shall hereafter Iiunt game 
of any kind whatsoever on Sunday 
within one-half mile of any church, 
school house, or private residence, shall 
be fined not less than $10 nor more 
than $50. Art. 184. The preceding 
article shall not apply to household 
duties, works of necessity or charity; 
nor to necessary work on farms and 
plantations in order to prevent the loss 
of any crop ; nor to the running of 
steamboats and other urater 
craftSj rata cars^ "wagon trains, 
common carriers, nor to the de- 
livery of goods hy them or the 
receiving or storing of said goods by the 
parties, or their agents to whom said 
goods are delivered, nor to stages carry- 
ing the United States maiS, or pas- 
sengers ; nor to foundries, sugar mills, 
or herders who have a herd of stock ac- 
tually gathered and under herd ; nor to 
persons traveling ; nor to ferrymen 
or keepers of tolltoridges,, keepers of 
hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants 
and their servants; nor to keepers of 
livery stables and their servants; nor to 
any person who conscientiously believes 
that the seventh or any other day of 
the week ought to be observed as the 
Sabbath, and who actually refrains from 
business and labor on that day for relig- 
ious reasons. Art. 185. Any person who 
shall run or be engaged in running any 
horse race^ or who shall permit or 
allow the use of any nine or ten pin 
alley, or who shall be engaged in match- 
shooting, or any species of gaining for 
money or other consideration, within 
the limits of any city or town on Sun- 
day, shall be fined not less than $20 nor 
more than $50. Art. 186. Any mer- 
chant, grocer, or dealer in wares or mer- 



chandise, or trader in any business 
whatsoever, or the proprietor of any 
place of public amusement, or the agent 
or employee of any such person, who 
shall sell or barter, or permit his pLace 
of business or place of public 
amusement to toe open for purpose 
of traffic or public amusement, on Sun- 
day shall be fined not less than $20 nor 
more than $50. The term place of pub- 
lic amusement shall be construed to 
mean circuses, theatres, variety the- 
atres, and such other amusements as 
are exhibited and for which an admls* 
sion fee is charged ; and v3hall also in- 
clude dances at disorderly houses, low 
dives and places of like character, with 
or without fees of admission. Art. 186a. 
The preceding article shall not apply to 
markets or dealers in provisions as to 
sales of provisions made by them before 
9 o'clock A. M., nor to the sale of burial 
or shrouding material, nevrspapers, 
ice, ice cream, milk, nor to the sending of 
telegraph or telephone messages 
at any hour of the day, nor to keepers of 
drug stores, hotels, boarding houses, 
restaurants, livery statoles, toartoer 
shops, toath houses, or ice 
dealers, nor to telegraph or telephone 
offices. 

{Civil Code.)— Art. 391. City Coun- 
cils shall have power to close drinking* 
houses, saloons, barrooms, beer sa- 
loons, and all places or establishments 
where intoxicating or fermented liquors 
are sold on Sundays, and prescribe 
hours for closing them, and 
also all places of amusement 
and business. 

Charter of the city of Dallas. Sec, 
106. The City Council shall have power, 
to open, close and regulate saloons 
and all places where intoxicating or fer- 
mented liquors are sold, on Sundays, 
and to prescribe what hours on 
iSunday such sales can be made, 
and what hours such places must be 
closed and sales prohibited ; and all 
places of amusements and busi- 
ness. 



SABBATH LAWS OF UTAH, YERMONT, YIRGINIA, WASHINGTON AND 

WEST VIRGINIA. 



Utah.— Sec. 4514. Eveiy person who, 
on Sunday, gets up, exhibits, opens, or 
maintains, or aids in getting up, exhibit- 
ing, opening, or maintaining any bull, 
hear, cock, or prize fight, horse race, 
circus, gambling house, or saloon, or 
any barbarous and noisy aifiiaise- 
meiit, or who keeps, conducts, or exhib- 
its any llieatre, melodeon, <jlaiiee, 
cellar, or other place of musical, theat- 
rical, or operatic performance, spectacle, 
or representation where any wines, 
liqiior^i, or intoxicating drinks are 
hought, sold, used, drank, or given away, 
or who purchases any ticket of 
acliiii§§ioii, or directly- or indirectly 
pays any admission fee to or for the 
purpose of witnessing or attending any 
such place, amusement, spectacle, per- 
formance, or representation, is guilty of 
a misdemeanor. § 4515. Every person 
who keeps open on Sunday any 
store, workshop, bar, saloon, bank- 
ing house, or other place of business, 
for the purpose of transacting- business 
therein, is punishable by finfe not less 
than 85, nor more than ^100. 

§ 4516. — The provisions of the preced- 
ing section do not apply to persons who, 
on Sunday, keep open hotels, boarding 
houses, batlis, restaurants, taverns, 
livery stables, or retail drug stores for 
the legitimate business of each, or such 
manufacturing establishments as are 
usually kept in continued operation. 
§ 4519. Every person who performs any 
unnecessary labor, or does any un- 
necessary business on Sunday, is guilty 
of a misdemeanor and shall be fined in 
any sum not exceeding ^25. 

^ 4520. — Labor employed by employees 
of such works as are usually kept in con- 
stant operation, and in irrigating, is 
not included in the foregoing section. 

§ 4521. — For the purpose of this act, 
Sunday shall commence at midnig^llt 
Saturday, and terminate the following 
niidnig^lit. 



Vermont.— Sec. 4315. A person who 
between t^velve o'clock Saturday 
niglDt and sunset on the following Sun- 
day exercises any bnsiness or employ- 
ment except such only as works of neces- 
sity and charity, or is present at any 
public assembly except such as is held for 
social and religious worship and moral 
instruction, or travels, except from 
necessity or charity, or visits from 
house to house except from motives of 
humanity or charity or for moral or 
religious edification, or holds or resorts 
to an^^ ball or dance, or uses or exercises 
any game, sport or play, or resorts 
to any tavern, inn, or house of enter- 
tainment for amusement or recreation, 
shall be fined not more than §2. § 4316. 
A person who latmts, shoots or pursues, 
takes or kills wild game or other birds 
or animals, or discharges firearms ex- 
cept in the just defense of person or prop- 
erty or in the performance of military 
or police duty, on Sunday, shall be fined 
^10, one-lialf t© i^o to tbe person 
vvSio EMakcs tlie complaint and one- 
half to the State. 

§ 670. — No process, except escape 
warrants and warrants for apprehend- 
ing a principal in favor of bail, and in 
cases of treason, felony, and breaches of 
the peace, shall be served or executed 
on a resident of the United States after 
•sunset on Saturday, until after twelve 
o'clock at night of the following Sunday ; 
and any such attempted service thereof 
shall be void. 

Laws of 1888, No. 18. The Board of 
Railroad Commissioners may authorize 
the running upon any railroad of such 
tliroug^li trains on Sunday as, in the 
opinion of the Board, tlje public neces- 
sity and convenience may require, 
having regard to tlie due observance of 
the day. 

Virginia. — § 898. No civil process 
shall be served on Sunday-, except in 



110 



cases of persons escaping out of custody, 
or where it may be specially provided 
b> law. §2970. Sachattaclinieiitmay 
be issued or executed on a Sunday, if 
oath be made that the defendant is 
actually removing- his effects on that 
day. § 3799. If a person, on a Sabbath 
day, be found laboring at any trade 
or calling, or employ his apprentices or 
servants in labor or other business, except 
in household or other work of necessity 
or charity, he shall forfeit $2 for each 
offense. Every day any servant or ap- 
prentice is employed shall constitute a 
distinct offense. § 3801. No railroad 
company, receiver or trustee controlling 
or operating a railroad shall, by any 
agent or employee, load, unload, run or 
transport upon such road on a Sunday 
any car, train of cars, or locomotive, nor 
permit the same to be done by any such 
agent or employee except where such 
cars, trains, or locomotives are used ex- 
clusively for the relief of wrecked trains 
or trains so disabled as to obstruct the 
main track of the railroad, or for the 
transportation of the United States 
mail, or for the transportation of 
pas§eiiger§ and their baggage, or for 
the transportation of live §tocli5 or for 
the transportation' of art!cle§ of such 
perislial5le nature as would be nec- 
essarily impaired in value by one day's 
delay in their passage. Provided, how- 
ever, that if it should be necessary to 
transport live stock or perishable articles 
on a Sunday to an extent not sufficient 
to make a whole train load, such train 
load may be made up -with cars 
loaded witli ordinary freight/ 
§ 3802. The word " Sunday" in the pre- 
ceding section shall be construed to em- 
brace only that portion of the day be- 
tween sunrise and sunset, and 
trains in transit having started prior 
to twelve o'clock on Saturday night, 
may, in order to reach the terminus or 
shops of the railroad, run until nine 
o'clock the following Sunday morn- 
ing, but not later. [The very reading 
of the two f '^egoing Sections in an 
audience in Richmond raised a roar of 
laughter, so completely had the tail of 
the snake, the exceptions, eaten up the 



head and body. Evidently, Virginia's 
government has been of, by and for the 
railroads.] § 3803. Any railroad compan}- 
receiver or trustee violating the provis- 
ions of section thirty-eight hundred and 
one, shall be deemed to have committed a 
separate offense in each county or cor- 
poration in which such car, train of cars, 
or locomotive shall run, or in which such 
car or train of cars shall be loaded or 
unloaded ; and shall be fined not less 
than $50, nor more than $100 for each 
offense. [An absurdly small fine for a 
corporation.] § 3804. No barroom, 
saloon, or other place for the sale of 
intoxicating liquors, shall be opened, 
and no intoxicating bitters or other 
drink shall be sold in any barroom, res- 
taurant, saloon, store, or other place, 
between tivelve o'clock on any 
Saturday night and sunrise of the 
succeeding Monday morning. If any 
person violate the provisions of this sec- 
tion he shall be fined not less than $10 
nor more than $500 ; and shall, also, in 
the discretion of the court, forfeit his 
license : but nothing herein contained 
shall apply to any city having 
police regulations on this suto- 
ject, and an ordinance prescribing a 
penalty equal to that imposed by this 
section. § 3806. If any person carry 
any gun, pistol, bowie knife, dagger 
or other dangerous weapon, to a place 
of worship while a meeting for reli- 
gious purposes is being held at such 
place, or, without good and sufficient 
cause therefor, carry any such weapon 
on a Sunday at any place other than his 
own premises, he shall be fined not less 
than $20. If any offense under this sec- 
tion be committed at a place of religious 
worship, the offender may bo arrested on 
the order of a conservator of the peace, 
without warrant, and held until a war- 
rant can be obtained, but not exceeding 
three hours. It shall be the duty of 
every justice upon his own knowledge, or 
upon the affidavit of any person, that an 
offense under this section has been com- 
mitted, to issue a warrant for the arrest 
of the offender. §3949. Under Ch. 193 
proceedings may be had for summoning 
a jury and witnesses, and an inquest 



Ill 



may be held as well on Sunday' as any 
other day. § 5. Where a eourt is 
dh'ected to be held, or any other pro- 
ceeding* directed by law to take place on 
a particular day of a month, if that day 
happen to be Sundaj^ tlie court shall 
be held or the proceeding take place on 
the next day. And where a law author- 
izes a court, or the proceedings of an 
officer, to be adjourned from day to day, 
an adjournment from Saturday to Mon- 
day shall be legal. [Decisions. Offense of 
violating Sabbath law punishable by 
a small fine, triable without a jury. 
The fine prescribed for the violation of 
the Sabbath law is recoverable before a 
justice by a civil warrant. Ex parte 
Marx, 9 Southeastern Reporter, 475.] 



Washington. — § 865. If any per- 
son be found on the first day of the 
week, commonly called Sunday, en- 
gaged in any riot, figlitlng or offering 
to fight, liorse racinif or dancing, 
whereby any worshiping assembly or 
private family are disturbed, every 
person so offending shall, on conviction, 
be fined in the sum of not to exceed 
•$100, to be recovered before any justice 
of the peace in the county where such 
offense is committed, and shall be com- 
mitted to the jail of said county until 
the said fine, together with the costs of 
prosecution, shall be paid. § 1266. No 
person shall keep open any playhouse, 
theatre, race ground, cock pit or 
play at any game of cliance for 
gain, or engage in any noi!i»y amuse- 
ment!'*, or keep open any drinking 
or billiard saloon, or sell or dispose of any 
intoxicating liquors, as a beverage, on 
the first day of the week, commonly called 
Sunday. §1267. No judicialbusinessshall 
be transacted by any court, except the 
deliberations of a jury, who have re- 
ceived a case on a week day, so called, 
and who receive further instructions 
from the court at their request, or de- 
liver their verdict, nor any civil pi-ocess 
be served by certifying or attesting 
officer, or any record made by the 
legally appointed or elected officer upon 
the day of the week commonly called 



Sunday ; provided, that criminal pro- 
cess may issue for the apprehension of 
any person charged with crime, and 
criminal examination be proceeded 
with. Writs of arrest, attachment and 
injunctions may issue and be served on 
Sunday in all cases in which the said 
writs might have been issued and served 
under the provisions of the Civil Code,, 
the Justices' Practice Act, and the Pro- 
bate Practice Act. §1268. Any person 
violating any of the provisions of the 
two preceding sections of this act shall 
be punished, upon conviction there- 
of, by a fine of not less than $30 or 
more than $250 for each offense, 
§1266. All violations of the pro- 
visions of this title shall be triable 
in any court having jurisdiction thereof. 
§ 1270. The person or persons found 
guilty of any offense specified hi this 
title, shall be fined as aforesaid, to be 
paid to the treasurer of the county for the 
toeneflt of comseion scStools, and 
the offender shall stand committed until 
the fine and costs are paid, or the same 
be commuted by confinement, at the 
rate of $2 per day. § 2067. It shall be 
unlawful for any person or pei^sons of 
this territory, to open on Sunday for 
the purposes of trade, or sale of goods, 
wares and merchandise, any sliop,, 
store or building, or place of business: 
whatever : provided, that this chapter 
shall apply to hotels only in so far as; 
the sale of intoxicating £iquors is con- 
cerned, and shall not apply to drug^ 
stores, livery stal)les and under- 
takers. § 2068. Any person or per- 
sons violating the foregoing section 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on 
conviction thereof be fined in any sum 
not less than .$25 nor more than $100. 
§ 2069. And it shall be the duty of 
any and all public officers of this 
territor}^ knowing of any violation of this- 
chapter to make complaint, under 
oath, to the nearest justice of the peace 
from where the offense was committed. 
§ 2070. Any public officer who sliall 
refuse or willfully neglect to inform 
against and prosecute offenders against 
this chapter shall be deemed guilty of a 
misd(»meanor, and on conviction sliall 



112 



he punished by a fine of not less than 
^25 nor more than $100, and the court 
iDefore which such officer shall be tried 
shall declare the office or appointment 
held by such officer vacant for the bal- 
ance of his term. § 1743. A writ of 
attacliineiit may be issued and exe- 
cuted on Sunday, if the plaintiff will 
show in his affidavit that the defendant 
is about to abscond on that day to the 
injury of the plaintiff. 



West Yieginia.— Ch. 41. § 15. No 
civil process or order shall be execut- 
ed on Sunday, except in cases of persons 
escaping- from custody, or where it may 
be especially provided by law. Ch. 106. 
§ 8. Such attacliinent may be issued 
or executed on Sunday if oath be made 
that the defendant is actually removing 
his effects on that day. Ch. 149. § 16. 
If a person on a Sabbath day, be found 
latoormg at any trade or calling, or 
employ his minor children, apprentices, 
or servants in labor, except in household 
or other works of necessity or charity, 
he shall be fined not less than $5, And 
every day any such minor child, or ser- 
vant, or apprentice is so employed, 
shall constitute a distinct offense. And 
any person found lumting', shooting, 
or carrying firearms on the Sabbath day, 
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and 
fined not less than $5, Ch. 149. § 17. No 
forfeiture shall be incurred under the 
preceding section for the transportation 
on Sunday of the mall, or of passeii- 
■gers and their baggage, or for running 



any railroad train or steamboat 

on the Sabbath day, or for carrying fire- 
arms or shooting on that day, by any per- 
son having* the right to do so under the 
laws of the United States or of this State; 
and no forfeiture for laboring on the 
Sabbath day shall be incurred under the 
said section, by any person who con- 
scientiously believes that the seventh 
day of the week ought to be observed 
as a Sabbath and actually refrains from 
all seculai' business and labor on that 
day, provided he does not compel an ap- 
prentice or servant not of his belief to 
do secular work or business on Sunday, 
and does not on that day disturb any 
other person in his observance of the 
same. And no contract shall be 
deemed void because it is made on the 
Sabbath day. Ch. 154. §11. Under Chap- 
ter 154, proceedings may had for sum- 
moning jury and witnesses, and an in- 
quest may be held as well on Sunday, 
as on any other day. Ch. 149. § 16. If 
any person, having a State license to 
sell spirituous II(^uors, wine, porter, 
ale, beer or any other intoxicating 
drink, shall * * * sell or give any 
intoxicating drink to any one on Sundaj^ 
he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and 
fined not less than $20 nor more than 
$100, § 17. A sale of any such liquors 
or drink by one person for another shall 
in any prosecution for such sale, be 
taken and deemed as a sale by both, and 
both may be indicted and fined therefor, 
either jointly or separately. 



PETITION FOR AMENDMENT OF STATE SABBATH LAW. 

^0 tlXje MUU SjetXatje JCrf (Duplicate to House.) 

The undersigned, adult residents of the city (or town) of._ 

hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to so amend our State laws with 
reference to the first day of the week, that, with the exception of works of real 
necessity and mercy, and private work by those who keep Saturday, all toil, and 
traffic and turmoil, whether by railroad or other corporations, or by individuals, 
shall be equitably fordbiden and vigorously suppressed, and so our State enjoy the 
benefits of laws on this subject as good or better than the best. 



SABBATH LAWS 

Wisconsin.— Sec. 4995. Any person 
Avho shall keep open liis sliop, ware- 
house or workhouse, or shall do any 
manner of labor, business or work, 
■except only works of necessity and char- 
ity, or be present at any daiieiiig or 
public diversion, show or entertain- 
ment, or take part in any sport, game or 
play, on the first daj^ of the week, shall 
be punished by fine not exceeding $10 ; 
and such day shall be understood to in- 
clude the time between the niidni^lit 
preceding and the niidnig^lit following 
the said day, and no civil process shall 
be served or executed on said day. 

[Decisions : Gibbs & Sterrett Manu- 
facturing Co. V. Brucker, III. U. S., 597 ; 
Ta5dorr. Young, 61 Wis., 314; Knox v. 
ClitTord, 38 Wis., 651; Beeman v.Wessels, 
19 N. W. Rep., 179. Contracts made 
on Sunday and valid in the State where 
made will be enforced by the courts of 
-another State under w^iose laws they 
would be void. Swann v. Swann, 21 Fed. 
Rep. , 289. Where a written lease is exe- 
cuted on Sunday and lessee enters into 
possession on that day, it is absolutely 
void and incapable of ratification. Vinz 
r. Beatty, 61 Wis., 645. Equity will per- 
petually restrain collection of an unjust 
judgment rendered in violation of a set- 
tlement made b^^ the parties through 
bad faith of one of them, though such 
agreement was made on Sunda3\ Blakes- 
ley V. Johnson, 13 AVis., 530. This statute 
can be violated but once on the 
same day by the same person by doing 
work thereon, and but one penalty can 
be imposed. Friedeborn v. Common- 
wealtli, 113 Pa. St., 242; 57 Am. Rep., 
464. To charge an offense under this sec- 
tion the complaint must show that 
the work <loiie m as not a Avork 
of necessity €>r charity. Jensen v. 
State, 60 Wis., 577. In New York the 
rule is that the defendant must show that 
he is within the exception. Fleming v. 
People, 27 N. Y., 329 ; People v. Jefferson, 
101 id., 19. See note to Sec. 4596.] 

113 



OF WISCONSIN 

§ 4596. An}^ person who conscientious- 
ly believes that the seventh, or any 
other day of the week ought to be 
observed as the Sabbath, and who 
actually refrains from secular business 
and labor on that day, may perform 
secular labor and business on the first 
daj^ of the week, unless he shall wilfully 
disturb thereby some other person, or 
some religious assembly on said day. 
[Decision. Party desiring to bring him- 
self under the exception of this section 
has the burden of doing so. Troewert v. 
Decker, 51 Wis., 46. Complaint need 
not aver that defendant was not of the 
class described in this section. Deforth 
V.Wisconsin, etc., R.R. Co.,52^U, 320.] 

§ 1564. If any tavern keeper or other 
person f hall sell, give away or barter 
any intoxicating liquors on the first 
day of the week, commonly called Sun- 
day, or on the day of the annual town 
meeting or the annual Fall election, such 
tavern keeper or other person so offend- 
ing shall be deemed guilty of a mis- 
demeanor, and shall on conviction, 
be punished by a fine of not less than $5 
n®r more than $25, or by imprison- 
ment in the county jail not to exceed 
thirty days, or by both such fine and 
imprisonment. 

§ 4276. Any notice, advertisement, 
statement or publication required by 
law or the order of any court, to be 
printed or published in any newspa- 
per, may be printed and published in a 
newspaper printed on Sunday, and 
such printing and publication shall be a 
lawful publication, and a full compliance 
with tlie order of the court or officer or- 
dering such publication, the same to all 
intents and purposes as though the same 
had been printed and published in a 
newspaper printed on a secular day, 
and any such notice, advertisement, 
statement or publication that may by 
law, or the order of any court, be re- 
quired to be published for any given 
number of weeks, may be published on 



114 



any day in each week of s ich term, and 
if so publislied as many weeks and as 
many times in each week as may be re- 
quired by such law or order, the same 
shall be as lawful a publication thereof, 
and as full a compliance with the order 
of such court or officer, as if the same 
had been printed and published on the 
same day of each such week. § 4278. 
No person shall serve or execute any 
civil proce§s from midnight preceding 
to midnight following the first day of 
the week, and any such service shall be 
void, and any person serving or exe- 
cuting any such process, shq,ll be liable 
in damages to the party aggrieved, in 
like manner and to the same extent as 
if he had not had any such process. 



Wyoming.— No Sabbath law. Ee- 
pealed suddenly on the eve of State- 
hood. It will not be to the credit of 
woman suffrage if the only St^te which 
has it remains almost the only State 
without a Sabbath law. 



^5 1. Every person who 
keeps open on Sunday, within the limits 
of any incorporated city in the Terri- 
tory of Arizona, any store, workshop, 
bar, saloon, banking house or other 
place of business, for the purpose of 
transacting any business therein, is 
guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon con- 
viction thereof shall be fined in a sum of 
not less than fifty dollars, and not to 
exceed three hundred dollars, or shall be 
imprisoned in the county jail not less 
than ten days and not more than sixty 
days, or shall be subject to both such 
fine and imprisonment. § 2. The pro- 
visions of the preceding section do not 
apply to persons who on Sunday keep 
open hotels, boarding houses, barber 
shops, baths, markets, restaurants, liv- 
ery stables, or retail drug stores for the 
legitimate business of each, or such 
manufacturing industries as are usually 
kept in continued operation. § 3. This 
act only applies to incorporated cities in 
the Territory of Arizona. § 4. This act 
shall take effect and be in force from and 
after its passage. (Enacted Mar. 30, 
1889.) 



Recent Decisions in Penn. 

The case of George R. Splane versus 
The Commonwealth, was decided on 
January 8d, 1888, by the Supreme 
Court of Pennsylvania. George R. 
Splane had been convicted of selling 
soda water on Sunday in his drug store. 
The following opinion was filed by the 
Supreme Court : This being a certiorari, 
we have nothing to do but to examine 
the magistrate's record, and as we find 
it to be in all particulars regular, setting- 
forth also, as it does, an offense clearly 
punishable under the Act of 1794 and its; 
supplements, we must affirm the judg- 
ment. We may add, however, that we 
concur in the opinion of the Court 
below. Few acts upon our statute 
books are of more importance to the 
welfare of the good citizens of this 
Commonwealth than the Act of 1794. 
The weekly day of rest is, from a mere 
physical and political standpoint, of 
infinitely greater value than is ordinarily 
supposed, since it not only affords a 
healthful relaxation to persons in every 
position of life, but throws a strong 
barrier m the way of the degradation 
and oppression of the laboring classes, 
who, of all others, need this ever-recur- 
ring day of rest and relief from weekly 
toil. It is therefore neither harsh nor 
unjust that men of capital should be 
required to obey those statutes which 
have been wisely ordained for the pro- 
tection of the Sabbath. 

In the case of Friedeborn versus The 
Commonwealth (Vol. 113, Pennsylvania 
State Reports, page 244) Chief Justice 
Gordon, delivering the opinion of the 
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on 
October 4th, 1886, says: "There are 
but few of our statutes which, in princi- 
ple, are of more importance than the 
Act of the 22d of April, 1794, commonly 
called the " Sunday Act," in that it 
recognizes the first day of the week as a 
Sabbath of rest for the well disposed 
and religious people of our Common- 
wealth, and we can entertain but little 
respect for those who wilfully and 
persistently violate its prescriptions. 
Agaiiist all such its penalty should be 
enforced until they are taught that a 
respect for its provisions may at least 
be profitable from a pecuniary point of 
view. 



DEFECTS OF U. S. SABBATH LAWS. 



There is no Sabbatli Ia:\v in Alaska, 
Arizona, California, D. C. and Idaho. All 
defects alleged of other States and Ter- 
ritories are true in larger measure of 
these, as far as statutes are concerned. 
(" Sunday closing" of saloons is accom- 
plished locally in AVashington City and 
in some few cities in California by city 
ordinances.) 

Connecticut, New Mexico andVermont 
by statute, Georgia, Texas and Virginia 
indirectly, cut down the Sabbath tole§§ 
than 24 lioiir§. In Texas this is done 
for the sake of the saloons, by city 
charters, and in Connecticut, Georgia 
and Virginia for the sake of the rail- 
roads. When Vermont realizes that a 
circus or theatre is legal on Sabbath 
evenings, its absurd ''sunset laAv" will 
disappear, 

"Labor" is not forbidden in Mon- 
tana, Nevada and "Washington, nor 
" 1>lisine§s " in Colorado and Illinois, a 
defect which in the latter case has 
di'awn out the protest of the Chicago 
clerks. The "opening" of place§ 
of business is not forbidden, but only 
actual traffic (which is hard to prove and 
costly), in Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, 
Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ne- 
braska, New Jersey, New York, North 
Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, 
Rhode Island, South Carolina, South 
Dakota and Vermont. (Not only selling 
but buying also is wisely forbidden in 
Iowa and New ]\Iexico.) 

The Saturday i^eepers have no ex- 
ception in the laws of Colorado, Dela- 
ware, Florida, Georgia, Main«, Mary- 
land, Nevada, Montana,New Hampshire, 
New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Vermont, 
Washington, The exceptions 

for them are made without due regard 
to the rights of the majority in Con- 
necticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, 
Kentucky, Minnesota, New York, North 
Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota. (The only 
States that have just and practicable ex- 



ceptions on this point are Arkansas and 
New Jersey.) 

Every State is deficient in failing to 
>^ 'otect drug'gists against needless toil 
and temptation to break the law by 
limiting their Sunday opening, as in 
Canada, to an hour or two. 

The only State that sanctions Sunday 
contracts by statute is West Virginia. 
Negotiable paper is so sanctioned by 
Maine 

The " opening" of rooms -iirhere 
liquors are commonly sold is not 
forbidden, but only the sale or exposure 
to sale (which is hard and costly to 
prove), in Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana 
(exception for " table wines "), Nebraska, 
New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, 
Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Liquors 
are forbidden only inferentially as 
"labor" or "business" in Alabama, 
Colorado, Florida, Montana. Nevada and 
Texas do not even thus forbid them. 
All the States except Rhode Island 
and Massachusetts allow saloons to hide 
their secret sales by screens. 

Amusements (more universally for- 
bidden than anything else — Massa- 
chusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New 
Mexico, wisely forbidding the attending 
as well as giving of entertainments, and 
Colorado and Utah includmg every 
gathering where admittance fee is 
charged ; Ohio forbiddiiag and no State 
permitting baseball) Massachusetts 
unwisely allows when license can be 
had, and permits also by the smailness 
of the fine, namely "^5." Buffalo Bill 
got the Jicense, but otherwise could have 
afforded the penalty. 

Except New York, all the States are de- 
ficient in laws regulating Sunday pro- 
cessions. 

Except Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, 
Iowa, and Maine, tlie States legally sanc- 
tion needless Sunday labor in trade or 
transportation or both. The States that 
permit transportation companies to work 



115 



116 



their employees on the Sabbath sub- 
stantially as on other days, are : Ala- 
bama, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississip- 
pi, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia, West 
Virginia, New York. Those that speci- 
fically permit some railroad work but 
not all, are : New Jersey, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Vermont. The only 
States that specifically permit street cars 
are Kansas, Louisiana, and Massachu- 
setts. Vessels are permitted to keep at 
work in Arkansas, Louisiana, Massachu- 
setts, Texas, West Virginia. 

The manufacture otnewspapers on 
the Sabbath is allowed in Louisiana, 
Massachusetts, their sale 

only in Minnesota, New York, Texas, 
Legal notices in Sunday 
papers are legalized only in New Jersey 
and Wisconsin. (Suppose a divorce no- 
tice thus escapes the eye of a wife too 
conscientious to read a Sunday paper, 
and she is the person chiefly interested 
in a wrong about to be perpetrated.) 
Sarber§ are excepted from those who 
may rest on the Sabbath in New Mexico, 
Oregon, Texas; tol>acco]li§ts in Min- 
nesota, and New York ; confectioners 
in Minnesota, New York; provi§ion 
dealers (butchers, bakers, grocers) in 
Louisiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Min- 
nesota, New Hampshire, Texas, 

and telegrapliers in Louisiana, 
Hassachusetts ; and ice dealers in 
Louisana, Maryland, Texas, 
1>atli house keepers in Louisiana, 
Massachusetts, Texas, Utah; livery 
men in Louisiana, Massachusetts, New 
Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washing- 
ton, "sacred concert" 
performers in Massachusetts, Michi- 
gan; butter and cSaeese Inakers in 
Massachusetts, only; booksellers, actors, 
keepers of soda fountains and all amuse- 
ment venders in Louisiana only. 

By applying the law only to tliose 
above 14 or 15 in Indiana, Nebraska, 
New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, a 
dangerous opportunity is left for increas- 
ing the wrong of child labor. 

The States whose minimum and maxi- 
mum penalties are absurdly small 



fines are : North Dakota, South Dakota, 
Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennes- 
see, Vermont. The States whose high- 
est penalty, even for repeated Sunday 
selling of liquors, does not permit either 
imprisonment or forfeiture of license for 
two years or more, are : Arkansas, Colo- 
rado, Illinois, Mississippi, South Caro- 
lina. Those that permit but do not re- 
quire imprisonment even after repeated 
offenses are: Alabama, Connecticut, 
Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, 
New Hampshire, Nebraska, New Mex- 
ico, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, 
(Delaware, Maryland, Mis- 
souri, wisely specify that forfeiture of 
license shall be for one or two years, 
after repeated offenses, and Massachu- 
setts and Michigan make forfeiture per- 
petual.) In Kentucky, New Jersey and 
New York a corrupt city official may re- 
store a forfeited license next day. 

States with various ambiguous, and so 
dangerous, exceptions and provisions, 
are : Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts, 
Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, 
New Mexico, Virginia. 

The tribes in the Indian Territory have 
Sabbath laws that should put to shame 
the States and Territories that have no 
such laws, or worse than none. As a 
sample we give that of the Cherokee 
Nation, abridged: "Every merchant, 
mechanic, artist, or other person, who 
shall keep open liis store, ware- 
house, shop, workhouse, or other place 
of business, or shall engage on Sunday 
in any manner of work, labor, or 
business, except only works of necessity 
and charity, shall be deemed guilty of a 
misdemeanor, and, upon conviction 
thereof before any court of competent 
jurisdiction, be fined in any sura not 
exceeding $50, 

§ 77. One-half of all fines shall be 
paid to the solicitor and sheriff ; pro- 
vided, that the keeping open of apoth- 
ecary shops and the preparation and 
sale of medicines on Sundays, for im- 
mediate use, shall not be deemed a 
violation of the provisions of this act. 



117 



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California. 



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Conn. 



Delaware. 



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Florida. 



Geo rgia. 
Idaho.' 



Illinois. 



Indiana. 



Indian Ter. 



Iowa, 



Kansas. 



Kentucky. 



Louisiana. 



Maine. 



Maryland. 



Mass. 



Michigan. 



Minnesota. 



Mississippi. 



Missouri. 



Montana. 



Nebraska. 



Nevada. 



N. Hampshire 



New Jersey. 



New Mexico. 



New York. 



N, Carolin. 



N. Dakota. 



Ohio. 



Oregon. 



Pennsylvama 



Rhode Island 



So, Carolina, 



So. Dakota. 



Tennessee. 



Texas. 



Utah, 



Vermont. 



Virginia, 



Washington. 



W. Virginia. 



Wisconsin. 



WVOJIINO. 



118 

[Form of City or Town Petition for the Enforcement of Sabbath Laws.] 

gjcr tlxje '^^czcntixfj^ mtxczxs of tto^ ^xtvf {ox ^own) of. 



The undersigned, your constituents, call your attention to the fact that the 
State laws, enacted for our protection against Sunday toil and traffic and turmoil, 
are notoriously violated, and we call upon you to enforce these laws, assuring 
you of our hearty support in this performance of your sacred oath. 



RESIDENCES. 



LFonn of Petition, when Efforts are made to Weaken the State Sabbath Laws.] 
$0 thZ MIkU MtnuU Xjf (Duplicate to House.) 

The undfersigned, citizens of the town or city of _ 

respectfully represent that great advantages have accrued to the public and private 
interests of the people of this State, from the operation of the laws upon our 
statute books in relation to the observance of the first day of the week, and they 
therefore pray your honorable body that no act be passed that will in any way 
impair the efficiency of the laws which now secure to the toiler his needed weekly 
rest. 



OCCUPATIONS. 



[Form of Petition for Amendment of State Sabbath Laws.] 
$0 tUz MtVtU ^ZtXKU JCrf.. _ ._ (Duplicate to House.) 

The undersigned, adult residents of the city (or town) of 

hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to so amend our State laws with 
reference to the first day of the week, that, with the exception of works of real 
necessity and mercy, and private work by those who keep Saturday, all toil, and 
traffic and turmoil, whether by railroad or other corporations, or by individuals, 
shall be equitably forbidden and vigorously suppressed, and so our State enjoy the 
benefits of laws on this subject as good or better than the best. 



OCCUPATIONS. 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE SATURDAY SABBATH THEORY. 

By Eev. George Elliott, Washington, D. C. 



Probably no commentator or expositor 
of Scripture would now claim that by the 
creative week we are to understand seven 
literal days of twenty-four hours each. So 
long ago as the time of Augustine, that 
great theologian declared these to be not 
literal but ineffable days. 

Surely no advocate of the Saturday Sab- 
bath understands by the declarations of 
Genesis that God literally rested on Sat- 
urday. Indeed, it is evident that by the 
resting of God we must understand some- 
thing "quite different from man resting. 
The whole account belongs rather to poetry 
than to history. 

It follows, therefore, that to place liter- 
alism upon the ordinance of the Sabbath, 
when it is the type of something so 
mystical in meaning as the cosmogony of 
Genesis, is to be indeed enslaved to the 
letter. 

There is no possible means of fixing the 
day of the original Sabbath. There is no 
certain preserved calendar of days and 
months and years. For the sake however, 
of any literalists who still believe that the 
work of creation began on Sunday eve and 
ended Friday at sunset, it may be sug- 
gested that the seventh day of creation 
was the first day of man's existence. If 
lie began the calculation of the week from 
that day and kept the same Sabbath with 
his ^Maker, then the first day of the week 
and not tlie seventh was the primitive and 
patriarchieal Sabbath. If a crude, bald 
literalism is to be the rule of interpretation, 
let us follow it boldly, no matter where it 
takes us. 

It is very improbable that, the primitive 
Sabbath was directly and regularly trans- 
mit ted to the time of Moses. The calendar 
is not forthcoming. Until some brass 
tables forged by Tubal Cain have been 
found, or the very notches by which Noah 
cut the days of the week and kept track of 
them on the door-posts of the ark have 
been produced, we shall insist that the 
Mosaic Sabbath cannot possibly be iden- 
tified with the Sabbath of creation. 

The case is made still more difficuU 
when we remember that the Hebrew mon- 
otheistic element begins with Abram of 
C'lialdea. It is possible that he brought 
from .Mesopf)tamia the divisionof the week 
and the tradition of the Sabbath. 

In the Chaldean calendar, so far as we 
can certainly be acquainted with it, each 
month contains thirty days and was divided 



into four weeks of seven days each, the 
last two days being regarded as intercalary. 
The first day of the week was therefore 
regularly the first day of the month. The 
fact that two extra days in each month 
were excluded from the computation of 
the week and regularly skipped makes it 
impossible that Iby this system of com- 
putation the exact recurring seventh day 
from the creation of man could not have 
been handed down to Abram. The As- 
syrian Sabbath, of which traces have 
been supposed to be found, occurred on 
the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of the 
month. 

There is also a break between Abram 
and Moses. For several generations Israel 
was in bondage in Egypt, and, we must 
infer, without a Sabbath. The Egyptians 
had not the seven days, but observed a 
period of ten days. It is not likely that a 
servile tribe, without letters or culture, 
could have preserved unchanged for over 
four hundred years a week whose very 
existence was connected with a day of rest 
of which they had been deprived. Con- 
sequently we find, as might have been 
expected, that the Mosaic Sabbath is in- 
troduced as something new, at the giving 
of the manna, and is always spoken of as 
established in memory of the deliverance 
from Egypt. 

These facts are quite sufficient to dispose 
of any pretense of observing the original 
day of the Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath 
was a Sabbath for a people whose entire 
countiy was comprised within a single de- 
gree of longitude. It is very evident that 
a Sabbath which was adapted to such a 
people cannot literally be applied to our 
Christain dispensation, which ranges over 
the whole three hundred and sixty degrees 
of the earth's surface, and where the day 
consequently begins at very hour of the 
twenty-four, to say nothing of the polar 
regions, where the day is six months long 
and the inhabitants would have to wait 
seven years for any Sabbath which lasted 
from sunset to sunset. 

We do not believe that there are any bits 
of glorified duration floating through time 
marked out from all other time. Time is 
sacred by its uses, and that time which we 
devote to a sacred use is made holy by 
such use. Time is an adjustment to our 
human weakness, a mode to our finite 
thinking, and while the law of the Sab- 
bath is such that when manifested it must 



119 



120 



make a special portion of time the mate- 
rial of which the Sabbath consists, yet its 
moral obligation is inherent in its moral 
meaning and not in its temporal garb of 
times and seasons. Yet without doubt the 
spiritual intent of the Sabbath will fail of 
full realization except all men unite upon 
one day. This one day we arrive at, not 
by a study of ancient calendars and chro- 
nology, but by consensus of the Christian 
Church, which has not been without de- 
jBned guides and which has for the highest 
and holiest reasons fixed upon the Lord's 
Day as a day which for Christendom em- 
bodies within itself the perpetual obliga- 
tion of the Sabbatic law. 

Another difficulty is connected with our 
purely arbitrary use of our word "day." 
When does the day begin and end ? Shall 
we define, as in the first chapter of Gene- 
sis, that the evening and morning make a 
Day, and therefore reckon from sunset to 
sunset, as did the Puritans? Or shall we 
keep the civil day from midnight to mid- 
night? 

Again, if we travel around the world to 
the westward we shall gain a day on the 



sun. Two islands in the Pacific within a 
few hours' journey of each other, one set- 
tled by Seventh-Day Baptists and the 
other by orthodox, may easily be con- 
ceived as keeping, the one Saturday and 
the other Sunday, the same absolute per- 
iod of time. Hence, Dr. Wallace, of Ox- 
ford, recommended Seventh Day Sabba- 
tarians to make a voyage around the 
world, "going out of the Atlantic Ocean 
westward by the Straits of Magellan to 
the East Indies, and then from the east 
returning by the Cape of Good Hope 
homeward, and let them keep their Satur- 
day Sabbath all the way. When they 
come home they will find their Saturday 
to fall on our Sunday, and they may 
thenceforth continue to observe their Sat- 
urday Sabbath on the same day with us." 
Indeed, there is no end to complications 
and petty problems that may arise when 
we once begin to exalt the form over the 
substance. Reason and common sense re- 
fuse to be put in bondage to such a 
thought form as time. It is a return to 
the slavery of the letter which Christian 
freedom cannot tolerate. 



THE RELATION OF SUNDAY LAWS TO THE JEWS. 



The courtesy with which Jewish papers 
have conducted the controversy against 
Sunday laws is in marked contrast with 
the discourtesy of the Seventh-Day Ad- 
ventist organ. For American Hebrews the 
following extract from a letter by W. F. 
Crafts, in the American Hebrew, on the 
Sunday law proposed in the Sunday Rest 
Petition to Congress, is subjoined : 

* * What wrong or even hardship would 
such a law impose on the Jews, that their 
rabbis should join with liquor dealers and 
infidels and the lawless classes in oppos- 
ing this petition, which has been indorsed 
by the great labor organizations of this 
country and by millions of good citizens 
of all creeds? Let us see. Jews in the 
mail and military service and in interstate 
commerce, under present arrangements, 
get neither Saturday nor Sunday for rest. 
There is no movement to get them Satur- 
day. Surely it would be better for them 
to rest on Sunday than to have no rest 
day. The only Jews whose privileges this 
law could in the least abridge are the very 
few who are engaged in shop keeping in 
the District of Columbia and the Territor- 
ies. "Private work" is to be allowed.* 

*Both the Blair and the Breckinridge Sunday- 
Rest Bill except Saturday keepers entirely from the 
operation of the law. See pp. 15, \2Z, 123. 



By police regulation and territorial laws, 
shops are usually closed already in the 
District and Territories. Were it not that 
the opening of Jewish stores seems to 
compel the opening of rival Gentile 
stores, so that the Sunday liberty of one 
becomes the Sunday slavery of all, we 
should not object to the few Jews who 
actually close Saturday, opening Sunday. 
We believe Jews are settling this prob- 
lem themselves, and will some day see 
that the Fourth Commandment only re- 
quires some uniform, fixed day of weekly 
rest, after six days of work, not after six 
days of the week. A leading rabbi of 
Brooklyn proposed that we should com- 
promise on some day in the middle of the 
week. It is more consistent with the re- 
publican institutions that the minority, 
seven-tenths of one per cent., who keep 
the Saturday-Sabbath should transfer 
their observance to the American Sabbath. 
Certainly law abiding Jews should not 
seek to break down the institution, which, 
more than all others, has made America, 
so free from the Anti-Semitism which 
flourishes in all countries except those 
that stop business one day in the week 
that the people may learn justice. " 



121 



SENATOR BLAIR ON SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST FALLACIES. 

[From STENoaRAPHic Report of the Hearing on the " Sunday Rest Bill."] 



Professor A. T. Jones, (Seventh-Day 
Adventist). — The principle upon which we 
stand is that civil government has nothing 
to do with religious observances. * ' Render 
unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, 
and unto God the things that arc God's." 

Senator Blair. — If Caesar is society and 
the Sabbath is required for the good of 
society, does not God require us to estab- 
lish the Sabbath for the good of society, 
and if society makes a law accordingly is 
it not binding ? 

Mr. Jones. — It is the good of society to 
be Christian ; it would he for the benefit 
of society. 

Senator Blair. — Do you not confuse 
this matter ? A thing may be required 
for the good of society, and for that very 
reason be in accordance with the will and 
the command of God. God uses his com- 
mand for the good of society, does he not ? 
God does not give us commands that have 
no relation to the good of society. 

Mr. Jones.— I deny the right of any 
civil government to make any l?w respect- 
ing anything that pertains to man's rela- 
tionship to his God under the first four 
of the Ten Commandments. 

Senator Blair. — Then you assume that 
this bill and all Sunday laws concern only 
the relationship of man to God, and not 
the relation of men to each other ? 

Mr. Jones. — That is the principle by 
which other things come in. 

Senator Blair. — Right there I found fault 
with your original proposition. You have 
got to establish before you can defeat the 
ground of Sunday laws, that Sunday laws 
are not for the good of Caesar — that is, not 
for the good of society. * * * 

Senator Blair. — Now if the Sabbath is 
necessarily for the general good of society, 
a republican form of government must 
make and enforce the observance ' of the 
Sabbath just as the theocracy did. You 
.seem to be laboring, as it strikes me, un- 
der the impression that a civil government 
for the good of the people, carried on by 
us under the republican form, cannot do 
anything that the theocratic form of gov- 
ernment does when the theocratic is the 
only form. They necessarily cover the 
same subjects matter, the control, the devel- 
opment of the good and the health of 
society ; it makes no diflerence whicli one 
or the other it may be. * * * Have you 
ever known an in.stance, though the senti- 
ment in favor of a Sabbath seems to be 
growing constantly stronger, where any 
State in this Union undertook to enact a 
law that anybody .should go to church V — 
which is the danger you seem to apprehend. 



Mr. Jones. — Not yet. They are now- 
after the first law. This will lead to that. 

Senator Blair. — Do you understand that 
it is the Church or the State that is mak- 
ing this law ? 

Mr. Jones. — It is the State that is doing 
it, just as Constantine did, to satisfy the 
Churches. 

Senator Blair. — It may or may not sat- 
isfy the Churches. The Churches give 
their reasons here, which may be right or 
wrong, for the establishment of the Sab- 
bath ; for this Sunday legislation in all 
the States. The State, the whole people, 
make the law. You say that the whole 
people shall not make a good law because 
the Churches ask for it. * * * 

Senator Blair. — You would abolish any 
Sabbath in human practice which shall be" 
in the form of law unless the individual 
here and there sees fit to observe it ? 

Mr. Jones. — Certainly ; that is a matter 
between man and his God. 

Senator Blair. — I have been all through 
this that the working people go through. 
I have been hungry when a boy. The 
first thing I can remember about was 
being hungry. I know how the working 
people feel. I have tugged along through 
the week and been tired out Saturday 
night, and I have been where I would 
have been compelled to work until the 
next Monday morning if there had been 
no law against it. I would not have had 
any chance to get that twenty-four hours' 
rest if the Sunday law had not given it to 
me. It was a civil law under which I got 
it. The masses of the working people in 
this country would never get that twenty- 
four hours' rest if there had not been a law 
of the land that gave it to us. There is that 
practical fact, and we are fighting with 
that state of things ; the tired and hungry 
man, woman and child all over this coun- 
try who wants a chance to lie down and 
rest for twenty-four hours out of the 
whole seven days, * * * Abolish the 
law of rest, take it away from the working'- 
people, and leave corporations, and em- 
ployers, and saloon-keepers, and every- 
body at perfect liberty to destroy that 
twenty-four hours of rest, and lawgivers 
and lawmakers will find out whether or 
not the people want it, and whether they 
want those lawmakers. * * * Q^y. 
tainly the hard working man needs rest, 
and tlie preachers, church members, and 

millionaires may do as they please. 
****** ->t 

The hilliH simply an act iwopoainq to make 
efficient the Sunday rent laws of the States, 
and nothing else. 



122 



THE NEW BLAIR SUNDAY REST BILL. 



In the Senate of the United States. 
December 9, 1889. 

Mr. Blair introduced the following bill, 
•which was read twice and referred to the 
€ommittee on Education and Labor. 

A Bill to secure to the people the priv- 
ileges of rest and of religious worship, 
free from disturbance by others, on the 
first day of the week. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House 
of Representatives of the United States 
of America in Congress assembled. That 
ho person or corporation, or agent, servant 
or employee of any person or corporation, 
or in the service of the United States in 
time of peace, except in the necessary en- 
forcement of the laws, shall perform, or au- 
thorize to be performed, any secular work, 
labor, or business to the disturbance of 
others, works of necessity and mercy and 
humanity excepted ; nor shall any person 
engage in any play, game, or amusement 
or recreation to the disturbance of others 
on the first day of the week, commonly 
known as Sunday, or during any part 
thereof, in any territory, district, vessel, or 
place subject to the exclusive jurisdiction 
of the United States ; nor shall it be law- 
ful for any person or corporation to re- 
ceive pay for labor or service performed 
or rendered in violation of this section. 

Sec. 2. That no mails or mail matter 
shall hereafter be transported in time of 
peace over any land postal route, nor 
shall any mail matter be collected, as- 
sorted, handled, or delivered during any 
jpart of the first day of the week, pro- 
vided, that whenever any letter shall re- 
late to a work of necessity or mercy, 
or shall concern the health, life or de- 
cease of any person, and the fact shall 
be plainly stated upon the face of the 
envelope containing the same, the Post- 
master General shall provide for the trans- 
portation of such letter or letters in pack- 
ages separate from other mail matter, and 
shall make regulations for the delivery 
thereof , the same having been received at its 
place of destination before the said first day 
of the week, during such limited portion of 
the day as shall best suit the public con- 
venience and least interfere with the due 
observance of the day as one of worship 
and rest ; and provided further, that when 
there shall have been an interruption in 
the due and regular transmission of the 
mails, it shall be lawful to so far examine 
the same when delivered as to ascertain if 
there be such matter therein for lawful 
-delivery on the first day of the week. 

Sec. 3. That the prosecution of com- 
merce between the States, and with the 
Indian tribes, the same not being work of 
necessity, mercy or humanity,, by the 
transportation of persons or property by 



land or water in such a way as to interfere 
with or disturb the people in the enjoy- 
ment of the first day of the week, or any 
portion thereof, as a day of rest from 
labor, the same not being labor of neces- 
sity, mercy, or humanity, or its observ- 
ance as a day of religious worship, is 
hereby prohibited, and any person or cor- 
poration, or the agent, servant or employee 
of any person or corporation, who shall 
willfully violate this section shall be pun- 
ished by a fine of not less than ten nor 
more than one thousand dollars, and no ser- 
vice performed in the prosecution of such 
prohibited commerce shall be lawful, nor 
shall any compensation be recoverable or 
be paid for the same. 

Sec. 4. That all military and naval drills, 
musters and parades, not in the time of ac- 
tive service or immediate preparation there- 
for, of soldiers, sailors, marines or cadets of 
the United States on the first day of the 
week, except assemblies for the due and 
orderly observance of religious worship, 
are hereby prohibited, nor shall any unnec- 
essary labor be performed or permitted in 
the military or naval service of the United 
States on the first day of the week. 

Sec. 5. That it shall be unlawful to pay 
or to receive payment or wages ih any 
manner for service rendered or for labor 
performed, or for the transportation of 
persons or of property in violation of the 
provisions of this act, nor shall any action 
lie for the recovery thereof, and when so 
paid, whether in advance or otherwise, 
the same may be recovered back by who- 
ever shall first sue for the same. 

Sec. 6. That labor or service performed 
and rendered on the first day of the week, 
in consequence of accident, disaster, or 
unavoidable delay io making the regular 
connections upon postal routes and routes 
of travel and transportation, the preser- 
vation of perishable and exposed prop- 
erty and the regular and necessary trans- 
portation and delivery of articles of food 
in condition for healthy use, and such 
transportation for short distance from one 
State, district or Territory into another 
State, district or Territory as by local laws 
shall be declared to be necessary for the 
public good, shall not be deemed viola- 
tions of this act, nor shall the provisions 
of this act be construed to prohibit or to 
sanction labor on Sunday by individuals 
who conscientiously believe in and observe 
any other day than Sunday as the Sabbath 
or a day of religious worship, provided 
such labor be not done to the disturbance 
of others. 

[Form of Petition.] 

To the United States Senate: (Duplicate to House.) 

The undersigned organizations, and adult resi- 
dents (21 years of age or more) of the United States, 
hereby earnestly petition your honorable body to 
pass the Blair Sunday Rest Bill. 



123 



(SABBATH) (DESTROYED.) 

THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION MUST BE PRESERVED. 

(SATUBDAT SABBATH) 



" Every man who conducts himself as a good citizen is accountabie alone to God for his religious 
laith, and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his own conscience."— 
George Washington. 

^' Congress shaU make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof."'— U. S. Constitution. 

" My kinardom is not of this iTorld." " Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Ciesar's ; 
jind unto God the things that are God's."— Je.<;;;s Christ. 

THE SEVEN TH-DAY ADVENTIST PETITION TO CONGRESS. 



In opposition to the great petition for a 
National Sunday Rest Law, the Seventh 
Day Advent ists are circulating a counter- 
petition, which, in some cases, has deceived 
the very elect. The Petition in duplicate to 
the United States Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives, is as follows: 

'■' We, the undersigned, adult residents of 
the United States, 21 years of age or more, 
herehy respectfully but earnestly petition 
your Honorable b Jdy not to pass any bill in 
regard to the observance of the Sabbath, or 
Lord's Day, or any other rehgious or ecclesi- 
astical institution or rite ; nor to favor in 
any way the adoption of any resolution for 
the amendment of the National Constitution 
that would in any way give preference to 
the principles of any one religion above an- 
other, or that will in any way sanction legis- 
lation upon the subject of religion, but that 
the total separation between Rehgion and 
the State, assured by our National Consti- 
tution as it now is, may forever remain as 
our fathers established it." 

Our own original petition, which called 
forth the above counter-petition, is as fol- 
lows : 

•' The undersigned adult residents of the 
United States, 21 years of age or more, 
hereby earnestly petition your honorable 
body to pass a bill, forbidding, in the United 
States Mail and MiUtar}^ service and in inter- 
stale commerce, and in the District of Col- 
umbia and the Territories, all Sunday traffic 
and work, except works of real necessity and 
mercy, and such private work by those who 
observe another day as will neither interfere 
with the general rest nor with public 
worship." 

Certainly it would take more than an or- 
dinary microscope to find in the petition 
just given, the conspiracies against American 
principles which the counter-petition first 
quoted leads its readers to expect. 

The counter-petition is not technically a 
falsehood, but it is certainly calculated to 
give the false impression (which, on the lips 
of some who circulate this counter-petition, 
becomes more than implication), that the 
petition which millions of \\i have been urg- 
ing before Congress, includes a proposition 
to enforce " Sabbath observance " as a " re- 
ligious or ecclesiastical institution or rite," 
and also a proposition to weaken the j)resent 
guarantees of our Constitution against a 
union of Church and State! Both of these 
implications are absurdly false. Our peti- 
tion is headed : " Fur a Sunday Rest Bill," 



and simply asks a law to protect the people 
in their right to a weekly day of rest, with- 
out requiring of any one a religious observ- 
ance of the day, and without hindering those 
who observe another daj^ from either wor- 
shipping on that day or working on the first 
day of the week — unless the work be 
of such a nature, shop-keeping for in- 
stance, as will interfere with the general rest. 
There are enough forms of " private work " 
that are generally permitted on the Sabbath 
to save any one from disobeying the com- 
mand, '' six days shalt thou labor." 

Out of the millions who have petitioned 
for a National Sabbath Rest Law, only a few 
thousand have asked for the original " Blair 
Sunday Rest Bill." But even that Bill for 
months has not been opened to a single one 
of the charges made by implication against 
it in the counter-petition. The Bill, as origi- 
nally presented, contained in the title and in 
the closing sentence an intimation that the 
law was intended, secondarily, to " promote 
the religious observance of the day,"* but 
the wording of the Bill itself showed that 
this was to be done, not by compelling any 
one to attend church or to abstain from doing 
so on any day, nor by forbidding any one to 
engage in work or recreation of a private 
character on the first day of the week, but 
only by giving opportunity for the culture of 
conscience on the part ot those who* desired it 
through the general suspension of public 
business. But it was stated in the presence 
of the champions of the Saturday Sabbath 
at the time of the Washington Convention 
and Hearing, that the word " promote " in 
this connection would be changed by the 
author of the Bill, to '' protect," so that public 
worship, so far as that Bill is concerned, 
would simply have that protection which 
any legitimate institution of the American 
people is entitled to on any day. 

Except these brief references, the original 
" Blair Sunday Rest Bill " was entirely occu- 
pied with provisions for " Sunday Rest." 



*The title of the new Blair Sunday Rest Bill of 
the 5l3t Congress is : "A bill to secure to the people 
the privileges of rest aud religious worship, free 
from disturbance by others, on the first day of the 
week." 

The new bill also makes the following exception 
for those who observe Saturday. "Nor shall the 
provisions of this act be co:;strued to prohibit or to 
sanction labor on Sunday by individuals who con- 
scientiously believe in and observe any other day 
than Sunday as the Sabbath or a day of religious 
worship, provided such labor be not done to tha 
disturbance of others." 



The Bill introduced no new principle of 
legislation. It was simply a supplement to 
the State Sabbath laws: first, to stop the 
breaking of those laws, and ttie Constitution 
itself, by Congress, through the Sunday 
work it requires in the various States in the 
Mail and Military Service ; secondly, to give 
to those working in these departments, and in 
interstate commerce, and in the Territories, 
and in the District of Columbia, who are 
beyond the control of State laws, the same 
protection in the matter of their rights of 
conscience and their right to the weekly rest 
that is given to nearly all our people by the 
Sabbath laws of the States. 

Where, then, does the counter-petition find 
its ground lor the implication, that there is 
in this measure a weakening of the American 
guarantees against a union of Church and 
the State ? We answer, By the very m- 
genious, but not ingenuous, device of treating 
two distinct measures that were before the 
last Congress as if they were one ; by making 
one petition against both, instead of two 
separate petitions, which is the only honest 
method of getting the real sense of the people 
in regard to them. These two measures 
happened to come, both of them, from Sena- 
tor Blair, who wrote one inbehalf of one 
group of persons, and the other in behalf of 
another and much larger group. It would 
be quite as fair to group the non-partisan 
Educational Bill of the same Senator with 
the most extreme Eepublican bill he tas ever 
favored, in order to get signatures against the 
Educational Bill from those who were only 
opposed to his Eepublican measure. ' 

It will surprise those officers and members 
of evangelical churches who have hastily 
signed the coimter-petition, not because they 
are opposed to Sabbath laws, but because they 
dislike the union of Church and State, to know 
that the proposed Constitutional Amendment 
offered by Senator Blair, which is attacked in 
this counter-petition, so far from weakening 
the present attitude of the Constitution in 
this matter, is a measure to strengthen it. 
At present only " Congress " is forbidden to 
set up " an establishment of religion." Sena- 
tor Blair proposes to forbid state legislatures 
also to do this, as there is at present 
nothing to prevent Utah, when it becomes a 
State, from establishing Mormonism, or New 
Mexico, Catholicism, or Wyoming, Presbyte- 
rianism. 

But a minor provision in this Amend- 
ment—the proposition that the public schools 
shall " teach the principles of the Christian 
religion," by which is meant Christian mora- 
lity, that is, morality with God and the Bible 
behind it, which, it is claimed, is a neces- 
sity of life in a repubhc, and which the 
friends of the Amendment declare can be 
taught without sectarianism, recognizing 



only the preference which the Gfovemment 
has shown from the first for Christian mor- 
ality over Mormonism or Mohammedanism ^ 
recognizing "the Christian reHgion" only as 
the government has always recognized it, by 
its chaplaincies, its oaths, its thanksgiving 
days — this provision of the amendment has- 
many_ opposers, even among evangelical 
Christians; and the shrewd originators of 
this counter-petition, perceiving that there is. 
by no means a sufficient number opposed ta 
Sabbath laws, counting liquor sellers, infidels 
and Sunday newspapers, with the little con- 
tingent of Saturday worshippers (who form 
seven-tenths of one per cent, of the popu- 
lation) to defeat the great Sunday Rest Peti- 
tion, which has been indorsed by the chief 
labor organizations, and by nearly all de- 
nominations of Christians, have so extended 
their petition as to get signatures on the same 
document from those who are opposed to all 
Sabbath laws, and also from friends of the 
Sabbath who are only opposed to the attempt 
to teach Christian morals in public schools,, 
or to a unio:i of Church and State. 

Not content with this, those who are urg- 
ing this counter-petition by voice and pen, 
attempt to enlist yet others in their motly 
army, by declaring what is as ridiculous as- 
it is false, that the Sunday Rest movement 
is only a preparatory step to a further 
measure compelling everybody to attend 
church on the first day of the week. 

Many others are induced to sign the 
counter-petition out of hostility to Roman 
Catholicism . The promoters of this counter- 
petition, in their official pubhcations, in pub- 
lic addresses, and through their assistants, 
most violently assert that the Sabbath Rest 
movement is a scheme in the interest of the 
papacy, alleging as conclusive proof the fact 
that it has been indorsed by Cardinal Gib- 
bons. This endorsement was given after 
millions of Protestants had indorsed it, and 
at my own solicitation. To be consistent, 
the counter-petition should oppose the Labor 
movement and Total Abstinence movement 
in its manifold platform, on the ground that 
the Cardinal has indorsed both of these move- 
ments also. 

The fundamental error of the chief pro- 
moter of this petition, is that he overlooks or 
ignores the fact that the same subject may 
have both a religious and a civil aspect, the 
one to be guarded by the Church, the other 
by th6 State. If legislatures have nothing 
to do with the Commandment, " Remember 
the Sabbath Day to keep it holy," they 
have to do with man's duties to his fellows,, 
and it is only with these human relations, as 
they relate to "the general welfare," that 
American Sabbath laws of to day have to do. 



125 



To the Signers of tJie Seventh Day Advent- 
ist Petition to Congress. 

"i'our name appears on the petition to 
Congress opposing legislation on ' ' Sab- 
bath observance " and many other matters 
as given on page 123. This petition is 
?jf ?-5rtZ/?/ claimecHo be in opposition to an- 
other petition (given below it), some of 
whose signers declare they could also sign 
the petition you have indorsed if it is to be 
understood exactly as it reads. The peti- 
tion which you have signed refers to a 
'- bill " and also to an " amendment," two 
distinct measures that were before the 
last Congress, each of which has many 
subordiniite propositions, and to some other 
matters not included in either measure.* 
We are. therefore, in doubt whether you 
are against some one of the many things 
named in the petition, or against them all. 
Hence, these inquiries: 

First. You ask Congress "not to pass 
any bill in regard to the observance of the 
Sabbath or Lord's Day, or any other re-, 
ligious or ecclesiastical institution or rite." 
Do you wish to be considered as also 
opposed to the " Sunday Rest Petition," 
which only asks Congress to give those 
under its jurisdiction the same protection 
against Sunday toil and traffic and turmoil 
as is generally enjoyed by those who are 
under the jurisdiction of State legisla- 
tures. 

Answer: 



Second. Our petition, you will observe, 
makes no reference to the original Blair 
Sunday Rest Bill, which may be what you 
wished to oppose. If so, do you object 
also to the new Blair Sunday Rest Bill 
(see p. 122) of the present Congress? 

Answer: 



what the President has done in this mat- 
ter by proclamation? 

Answer : 



Fourth. Do you object to giving to 
Post Office employees the same protection 
against needless Sunday work that is 
given to other Government employees and 
to employees generally, thus completing 
and making permanent by law what the 
Postmaster General has done in this 
matter ? 

Answer : 



Fifth. Do you object to making perma- 
nent by law, the reductions of Sunday 
work recently made by many railroad cor- 
porations, and completing these reforms 
by removing what railroad presidents 
declare to be the chief obstacle to com- 
plete suspension of Sunday trains, namely, 
competition, by stopping all Sunday work 
in interstate commerce that is not work of 
necessity or mercy? 

Answer : 



Sixth. Do you object to giving a Rest 
Day to the People of the District of Co- 
lumbia, whose Commissioners have recent- 
ly said that it has no valid Sunday law, not 
even enough to stop servile labor on that 
day ; which is, therefore, to be classiiied 
with those Frenchy and frontier parts of 
the civilized v*^orld having no Sunday law? 
Do you object to the enactment by Con- 
gress of as good a " Sunday Rest Law" 
for the Capital as can be found in the 
statutes of any State, in accordance with 
the desire of the Commissioners, approved 
by the President?* 

Answer: _ 



Third. Do you object to giving Sunday 
rest to the Soldiers and ^Marines in the 
United States Army and Navy — thus com- 
pleting and making permanent by law 

* This Seventh Day A(lventi^^t petition is like a 
Mavpole— it provides strings to catch " all sorts and 
conditions of men." To the Catholic who would 
not sign a plain petition against Sunday laws, es- 
pecially would not oppose what his Cardinal had 
approved, they reafh out the string about reliL'ion in 
the schools; to the Protestants, the string about 
Church and State: to the Southern conservative, the 
string about keepint; the Constitution as it is; and so 
all these dance round thedisgui>ed Maypole together, 
unconscious that they are being counted not alone 
against the things to which their attention was 
called, but against the civil Sabbath also and espe- 
cially. 

Those who discover that their signatures have 
been obtained under false pretenses should so write, 
asking that they be allowed to have their names 
withdrawn from the petition, or asking that their 
indorsement be considered only as against en- 
forcing the reliirious observance of the Sabbath, 
not as againt Sunday Rest Laws for workingmen. 



* Extract from Report of Commissioners of the 
District of Columbia to .51st Congress : " The Com- 
missioners recently had occasion to pass upon 
the complaint of a citizen that the work of con- 
structhig a street railway was prosecuted on Sun- 
day. An examination of the statutes failed to dis- 
close any existing general lawprohibitin<r such em- 
ployment. The Commissioners believe that secnlar 
employments should not be allowed on Sunday, 
and they recommend the enactment (.f a law in ac- 
cordance with that (sentiment.'" President Harrison 
expressed specific and emphatic approval of the 
above proposition to a committee of the American 
Sabbath Union, and refers to it and kindred mat- 
ters in the fol'owing paragraph of his message : 
" The interests of the peojjle of the District of Co- 
lumbia should not be ]o«t sight of in the pressure 
for considerhtion of measures affecting the whole 
country. Having no Legislature of its own, either 
municipal or general, its people must look to Con- 
gress for the regulation of all those concerns that, 
in the States, are the subject of local interest. Our 
whole people have an interest that the National 
Capital should be made attractive and beautiful, 
above all, that its repute for social order ahould be 
well sustained." 



126 

Setenth. Or is it the enforcement by law on the first day of the week, that all the 
of a religious observance of Sunday that people rtiay have oppoktunity for rest 
you oppose ? and home fellowships, and those who> 

Answer : choose for moral culture ? 

Answer: 

Eighth. Are you opposed to a purely civil • 

law stopping toil and trafltic and turmoil 
Please sign as indicated below and return to, 

Yours, respectfully, 

WILBUR F. CRAFTS, 

74 E. 90th Street, New York City.. 

Memorial to the United States Senate: The undersigned indorsed a Seventh Day^ 
Adventist petition asking Congress not to pass any bill in regard to the observance of 
the Sabbath, etc., etc., under misapprehension, and wishes to withdraw his indorsement 
and transfer it to the Sunday Rest Petition of the American Sabbath Union and the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 

Names. Residences. 



Memorial to House of Representatives of the U. S. : The undersigned indorsed a Seventh 
Day Adventist petition asking Congress not to pass any bill in regard to the observance 
of the Sabbaih, etc., etc., under misapprehension, and wishes to withdraw his indorse- 
ment and transfer it to the Sunday Rest Petition of the American Sabbath Union and 
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 

Names. Residences. 



The author of this book personallj'- examined the bushel of petitions gathered by Seventh-day Advent- 
ists in Michisran, after they were received by the House of Representatives. 1. He found many petitions 
which could riot be tested because there was no indication as to what city or town they came from. 2. In 
repeated instances whole rows of names were in one handwriting, with no certificate that they had been 
authorized. 3. Of thu few persons, selected at random, to whom the above letter was sent, six replied that 
they signed under&tandingly, and twenty-six signed the withdrawal, saying that they had been deceived. 



The deceptions practiced by the Seventh-day Adventists in Los Angelos, described on page 18, were 
duplicated afterwards in the City of "Washington, where they announced a meeting to discuss the proposed 
Sunday law for the District of Columbia, giving no clue to the fact that the meeting was in opposition tO' 
it, so taking advantage of the advertising of the American Sabbath Union for a convention later in the 
same week, for which it was easily mistaken. Commissioner Douglass, who had asked Congress for the 
Sunday law for the Capital, was even invited by the Adventists to preside at their meeting, and was on the 
point of consenting, under the impression it was a meeting to help in securing the law, when a casual re- 
mark, "there may be some speaking on the other side," roused his suspicions and saved him from being 
tricked. As a matter of fact there was more than " some speaking on the other side." The meeting was 
advertised on the very day it occurred as an " impartial discussion," although not one who had any right 
to represent the friends of the bill had agreed to speak. The sectarian character of the Adventist manage- 
ment of the meeting was hidden under the alias " Religious Liberty Association." They also circulated a 
petition which made a brief reference t d Sunday laws in its 20t,h and 21st lines, where few would read it, 
but was headed in capital?, " The American Constitution must be preserved," after which there were 
numerous deceiving quotations having no reference to Sunday laws, but only to enforcement of religion 
by law. The whole affair was the worst specimen of "low politics " that even Washington ever saw. 



127 



INDEX TO JUDICIAL DECISIONS ON SUNDAY LAWS. 



Bakers, 104. Also, 146 Mass. 430. 

Barbers, 103. Also, 145 Mass. 353. 1 
Pa. Leg;. Gaz. 491. S. G. 17 Pitts. L. G. 
154. Piersons Decisions, 61. 4 Lan. 
L. Rev. 177. S. C. 4Kulp. 286. 7 Baxt. 
(Tenn.) 95. 59 lud. 416. 29 Wis. 21. 
40 Conn. 111. 101 Mass. 366. 

Baseball, 98. Also, Mo., 1889, AV. F. 
Williams, illegal. 

Breach of Peace, 103. 

Business, 73, 94. 13 Wend. (N. Y.) 425. 
4 E. D. Lea. (N. Y.) 234. 9 Abb. (N.Y^) 
206. 44 Barb. (N. Y.) 618. 52 Wis. 320. 
57 Wis. 46. 35 Ct. 216. 13 Mete. (Mass.) 
284. 2 Doug. (Mich.) 73. 9 Allen (Mass.) 
118. 120 Mass. 490. 35 Pa. St. 511. (See 
Opening-, Labor, Worldly Employ- 
ment, Selling, Ordinary Occupation. 

Buying, 86, 98, 103, 104. See above. 

Charity, 118. Mass. 195. 19 S. C. Am. 
Rep. 431. 13 Mass. 324, 350, 351. 117, 
Mass. 65. 44 Vt. 116. S. C. Am. Rep. 
366. 43 Mich. 1 S. C. 38 Am. Rep. 159, 
97 Mass. 411. 1 S. E. Rep. 569. 67 Ind. 
588. 11 Pac. Rep. 534. 

Constitutionalitv, 1, 16, 65, 68, 78, 103. 
Also, 25 Tex. App. 133. 

Contracts, notes, etc., 67, 67, 68, 71, '73, 
74, 75f, 76, 77, 79, 84, 84, 85. 90, 94, 98, 
98, 103, 113. Also, 61 Wis. 314, 13 
Mete. (Mass.) 284. 19 Mo. App. 656. 
35 Me. 143. 2 Doug. (Mich.) 73. 14 
N. H. 133. 19 Vt. 358. 1 Root (Ct.) 
474. 6 Watts(Penn.)231. 22 Penn. St. 
102. 22 Ala. 288. 14 B. Mon. (Kv.) 
287. 12 Mich. 378. 24 Mich. 425. 8N. 
W. Rep. (Wis.) 26. 6 Watts (Penn.) 
231. 27 Pa. St. 90. 1 Hill 76. 2 Sandf. 
318. 107 Mass. 439. 48 Iowa 228. 14 • 
Mich. 287. 23 Minn. 551. 38 Wis. 651. 
Ill U. S. Rep. 597. 

Counted or not, when Sunday, 71. 

Courts, etc., 73, 74, 75, 84, 85, 87, 98. 

Damages, 68, 74, 76, 76, 84, 85, 89, 94, 
98. Also, 64 Miss. 661. 140 Mass. 199. 

Disturbance of others, 46. 

Druggist, 63 Miss. 129. 

Farm work, 20 Ark. 289. 67 Ind. 595. 67 
Ind. 588. 59 Ind. 416. 91 Mass. 411. 
97 Mass. 407. 4 Gush. (Mass.) 243. 6 
Mass. 76. 13 Mass. 354. 4 Ohio St. 
566, 354, 297. 

Foundries, 34 Pa. St. 398. 12 Abb. (N. 
Y.) N. Gas. 446. 

Grocers, 78. 

Housfdiold exempted, .34 Pa. St. 398, 121 
Mass. 301. 

Ice cream, 104. 

I(;e factory necessity, 25 Tex. App. 597. 

Indictable, Sabbatli br(!aking, 8 Grim. 
L. Mag. 547. 20 N. Y. Week. Dig-. 514. 

Jury, not necessarv, HI. 

Labor, 73, 76. Also, 4 Fred. (N. C.) 400. 
4 Ind. 619. KJ7 111. 429. 7 Bl. (Ind.) 



479. 29 Ark. 386. 29 Ga. 526. 15 Ohia 

225. 1 Hilt. N. Y. 76. 6 W^atts (Pa). 

444. 3 Watts & S. Pa. 507. 1 Browne- 

(Pa.) 171. 6Vt. 219. 7R.L22. 22 Pa. 

St. 102. 35 Pa. St. 511. 14 Ind. 396. 

4 Ind. 112. 31 Ind. 64. See Business. 
Liquors, 71, 72, 86, 104. Also, 14 Ct. 

Claims. Rep. 498. 33 Ind. 416. See 

Opening. 
Mercy, See Charity. 
Miller, 4 Ohio St. 566. 
Misdemeanor, 107. See Nuisance. 
Necessity, 67, 68, 74, 74, 77, 85, 97f, 103, 

113. Also, 112 Mass. 467. 33 Ind. 416.. 

4 Ohio St. 566. 6 Mass. 76. 4 Gush. 

(Mass.) 243. 4 Ohio St. 566. 6 Pa. 417. 

18 Ala. 280. 25 Ala. 528. 15 Mo. 513. 

11 Post. (N. H.) 490. 22 Barb. (N. Y.); 

539. 31 Ind. 189. 11 Pac. Rep. 534. 

See also, "Charity," Farm, Barber,, 

Watchman, Foundries, Undertaker. 
Nuisance, 107. Also, 7 Baxt. (Tenn.) 

95 S. C. 32 Am. Rep. 555. 59 Ind. 416. 

29 Wis. 21. 40 Conn. 111. 101 Mass. 366. 
Opening, Shops, etc., what constitutes,. 

67, 68, 71f, 82, 84. Also, 195 Mass. 99. 
Ordinary Calling, 7 R. L 22, 62 Ga. 440, 

14 Allen (Mass.) 487. 
Payment, Sunday, debt, 70 Wis. 69. 
Penalties, 111, 113. 
Railroads, 74, 84, 84, 89, 94, 103. Also, 

140 Mass. 199. 
Registering voters, 5 Rich. S. C. 299. 
Salvation army may not worship by bass 

drum in streets, N. H. Sup. Ct., 1889. 
Saturday keepers, 78, 103, 113. Also, 

144 Mass. 359, 16 Lea (Tenn.) 476. See 

Constitutionality. 
Selhng, 86. Also; 56 Conn. 333. 15 Att. 

Rep. 370. 7 New Eng. Rep. 98. 
Societies may meet, 65"Barb. (N. Y.) 357. 

1 Hilt. N. Y., 469. 
Soda water, 86. 
Statutes of limitation, 104. 
Street cars, 103, 103. Also, 22 Penm. St. 

102. 25 Tex. App. 599. 
Sunday papers, legal notices in, 71, 74,. 

98. Also, 42 Ohio St. 585. Crying- of, 

illegal, 103. Also, 11 Pac. Rep. 534. 

144 Mass. 362. 
Tobacco, not permitted "drug,"Marz- 

quiski, Mass. Sup. Court, 1889. Also, 

69 Ind. 61. 18 Ind. 416. 33 Ind. 201. 

33 Ind. 215. 78 Ind. 332. 76 Ind. 310. 

12 Abb. (N. Y.)N. Gas., 458. 
Traveling, 84, 94. 3 Am. Rep. 56, 8 Am. 

R. 366. 139 Mass. 74. 121 Mass. 301. 
Undertaker, 9 N. Y. St. Rep. 720. 
Vessels, 103. Also, 64 Miss., 661. 
Watciimaii, 14 Ct. of Claims Rep., 498. 

21 Conn. 40. 
Will, 9 Allen (Mass.) 118. 5 P. F. Smith 

(Pa.) 183. 48 N. H., 27. 
Worldly employment, 103. 



128 



INDEX TO SABBATH EEFORM DOCUMENTS, NOS. 1 TO 30. 

Massachusetts, 4; laws of, 81. 
Merchants and Sunday saloons, 49, 59. 
Methodists (North and South), 10. 
Mihtary service. Sabbath for, 8, 37. 
Minnesota, organized, 12; laws of, 85. 
Mississippi, laws of, 87. 
Missouri, organized, 12 ; laws of, 87. 
Montana, 12, 12, 17, 62 ; laws of, 88. 
Museums, Sunday opening of, 6, 50. 
Nebraska, laws of, 89. 
Nevada, defects of, 62 ; laws of, 89. 
New England, declining, 4. 
New Hampshire, 12; laws of, 90. 
New Jersey, organized, 12 ; laws of, 91. 
New Mexico, organized, 12 ; laws of, 95. 
New York, 5 ; laws of, 95 ; City of, 6. 
North Carolina, laws of, 99. 
North Dakota, laws of, 99. 
Ohio, organized, 12 ; laws of, 100. 
Oregon, defects of, 12 ; laws of, 101. 
Organizations, Sabbath, 5, 6, 6, 12, 12. 
Papers, Sunday, 5, 6, 6, 8. 53 ff. 
Pennsylvania, 6, 12 ; laws of, 101. ' 
Petitions, 11, 30, 33, 41, 98, 104, 112, 118, 

122, 126. 
Petition, The Great, for "Sunday Res^ " 

3, 5, 9, 33 ff, 23. 
Philadelphia, Sabbaths of, 6, 61. 
Physical benefits of Sab., 2, 3, 45, 46, 47 f 
Presbyterians, 5, 9, 10. 
Provisions, Sunday sales of, 6. 
Puritans, 18, 20, 57. 
Railroads, Sunday work of, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 

9, 11, 14, 21, 23, 29, 32, 38, 38 ff, 51 ff, 55 
Railroad men, 7, 23, 29, 39, 40, 42, 43, 52 f. 
Reformed (Dutch) Church, 10. 
" Religious legislation," 19, 38, 65, 66. 
Rhode Island Laws, 105. 
Roman Catholics, 7, 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 

58, 64. 
Saloons, Sunday, 11, 12, 12, 13, 18, 27, 

46, 50, 51, 57 ff. 
Saturday half hohday, 51, 52, 53, 59. 
Saturday-keepers, 7, 11, 12, 18 ff, 21, 27, 

48 f, 119 ff. 
Scotland, Sunday closing in, 61. 
South Carolina, laws of 106. 
South Dakota, laws of, 107. 
Street Cars, Sunday, 6, 
Tennessee, laws of, 107. 
Territories, need of law of Congress, 36. 
Texas, defects of, 12, 17, 62; laws of, 108. 
Tobacco, Sunday sales of, 6, 49. 
Toronto, its quiet Sabbaths, 23, 38, 55. 
Utah, laws of, 109. 

Vt, orderly Sabbaths of, 4, laws of, 109. 
Virginia, organized 12 ; laws of, 109. 
Wages, related to Sunday work, 28, 40. 
Washington, army order of, 8. 
Washington, state of, 12; laws of, 111. 
W. C. T. U., 13, 34. . ^ 

West Virginia, laws of, 112. 
Wisconsin organized, 12 ; law^s of, 113. 
Workingmen, 3, 12, 25, 26, 28, 39 ff, 45 f, 

57, 60, 60 f. 
World's Fair, 50. 
Wyoming, organized, 12 ; laws of, 114. 



Addresses, on Progress in 1889, 4 ; on 
Liberty, 17 ; on Labor, 31 ; on Amuse- 
ments, 47 ; on Sunday Saloons, 59. 

Alabama, laws of, 67. 

Alaska, no Sabbath law, 11, 67. 

American Sabbath Union, 10, 12, 13. 

Amusements, Sunday, 45 ff, 66. 

Arizona, no Sabbath law, 11, 62, 67. 

Arkansas, laws of, 12, 67. 

Baptists, action of, 9f, 10. 

"Barbers' Sunday," 11, 27. 

Baseball, Sunday, 50f, 63. 

Blair Sunday Rest Bill, 122. 

Boston, Sabbaths of, 5, 23. 

California, 11, 12, 12, 12, 17, 28, 52," 62, 68. 

'' Church and State," 22, 23, 44. 

Cincinnati, 13, 60, 61, 63. 

Colorado, 12, 12, 59 ; laws of, 69. 

Concerts, Sunday, 50. 

Confectioners, Sunday opening of, 50. 

Congregationalists, action of, 5. 

Congress, Sunday session of, 8 ; junket- 
ings, 33 ; proposed Sabbath legislation 
by, 3,5, 9, 21, 22, 28, 30, 33 ff. See D. C. 

Connecticut, 5, 69. 

Constitution, relation to Sabbath, 20, 22 ff 

Continental Sunday, 12, 18, 34, 45. 

Delaware, laws of, 71. 

Denver, Sunday saloons, 12, 59, 60. 

District of Columbia, 11, 15, 36, 62, 71. 

Education, relation of Sabbath to, 34. 

Equity in Sabbath laws, 4, 6, 11, 24, 49 f, 
54, 55. 

Excursions, Sunday, 51 ff. 

Eield, opinion of Justice, 32, 46, 48. 

Elorida, laws of, 71. 

Foreigners, 18, 23 f, 47, 55, 63, 64. 

France, 11, 17, 18, 39, 45, 47, 48, 58. 

Georgia, laws of, 71. 

Hearing on " Sunday Rest Law," 10, 21. 

Home, 19, 29, 31, 43, 52, 58, 60, 61. 

Idaho, no Sabbath law, 11, 62. 

Illinois, organized 12 ; laws of, 73. 

Inauguration Sunday, 8. 

Indiana, laws of, 73. 

Indian Territory, 116. 

Iowa, organized, 12 ; laws of, 75. 

Ireland, Sunday closing in, 61. 

Jews, 22, 27, 20. 

Kansas, organized, 12 ; laws of, 76. 

Kentucky, organized, 12 ; laws of, 76. 

Knights of Labor, 23, 31, 57. 

Law and Order Leagues, 5, 63. 

[Laws, Federal, 22; State, 115 ff. Index 
to Judicial decisions, p. 127.] 

Laws, needed, 28, 32, 65, 66. 

Laws, Sabbath, 12, 13, 16, 46, 48, 65 ff. 

Liberty, 3, 16, 17 ff., 32, 32, 55, 62, 65, 66. 

"Liberty Leagues," 27, 61. 

Lincoln's army order, 8. 

Literature, Sabbath, 129 f. 

Louisiana, 10, 11, 12, 12, 28, 77. 

Lutherans, 10, 13, 24. 

Mails, Sunday, 8, 9, 22, 29, 37. 

Maine, laws of, 79. 

Manufacturers and Sunday saloons, 60. 

Maryland, organized, 12 ; laws of, 79. 



50th Congress, ) SENATE/=^='^=^=^^^^^^Mis. Doc, 

2d Session. i \ l^o. 43. 



IX THE SEi^ATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Jaxuaky 17, 1869. — Ordered to be printed. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 



N^otcs of a hemming before the Committee on Education and Labor, United 
States Senate, 'Thursday, December 13, 1888, on the bill {S. 2983) en- 

■ titled ^'A hill to secitrc to the people the enjoyment of the first day of 
the iceelc, comnidnly Jcnown as the Lord^s day, as a day of rest, and to 
promote its observance as a day of religious worshiyP 



Thursday, December 13, 1888. 

The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m. in the Senate reception room. 

Preseat : Senators Blair (chairman), Palmer, Wilson, Call, and Payne. 

There appeared before the committee Kev. Wilbnt F. Crafts, of New 
York City ; General A. S. Diven, of Elmira, N. Y. ; Eev. F. W. Conrad, 
D. D., of Philadelphia, Pa. ; Eev. Byron Sunderland, D. D,, and Rev. 
George Elliott, of the city of Washington, a committee of the American 
Sabbath Union j and Mrs. J. C. Bateham, of Ohio, national superin- 
tendent of Sabbath Observance department of the AYoman's Christian 
Temperance Union ; Hon. G. P. Lord, of Illinois ; Eev. T. P. Stevenson, 
D. D.,of Philadelphia, corresponding secretary of the National Eeform 
Association; Eev. A. H. Lewis, D. D., editor of tbe Outlook and Sab- 
bath Quarterly j Prof. Horrick Johnson, D. D., of Chicago; Eev. C. H. 
Payne, D. D., of New York ; Prof. Alonzo T. Jones, of Battle Creek 
College, Michigan ; John B. Wolff, Prof. D. B. Wilson, D. D., of Pitts- 
burgh; Eev. John N. Stearns, secretary of the National Temperance So- 
ciety ; Eev. C. E. Hunt, of Iowa ; Eev. Stephen M. Haskell, of Massa- 
chusetts; John B. Wood, Louis Schade, and others. 

The CnAiEiiAN : The hearing is upon Senate bill No. 2983, which is 
as follows : 

Be it enacted hj the Senate and House of Eepresentalives of the United States of Ameyica 
in Congress assemhicd, Tiiat no person, or cori^oration, or agent, servant, or employ^ 
of any person or corporation aliall perform or authorize to be performed any secular 
work, labor, or business to the disturbance of others, \Yorks of'Decessity, and mercy, 
and humanity excepted; nor fihali any person engag;o in any play, game, or amuoo- 
ment, or recreation to the disturbance of others on the first day of the week, com- 
monly known as the Lord's day, or during auy part thereof, in any Territory, district, 
vessel, or place Bubjcct to the exclusive jurisdici ion of the United States ; nor shall 
it be lawful for any person or corporation to receive pay for labor or service performed 
or rendered in violation of this bection. 

Sec. 2. That no mails or mail matter thall hereafter be transported in time of peac© 
over any land postal-route, nor shall auymail matter be collected, af'sortcd, handled, or 
delivered during any part of the lirst dny of the week : Frovidcd, That whenever any 
letter shall relate to a work of necessity or mercy, or shall concern the health, life, or de- 
cease of any person, and the fact shall be plainly stated upon the face of the envelop© 
containing the same, tbe Postmaster-General shall provide for the transportation of 



2 SUNDAY REST BILL, 

sucli letter or lettets in packages separate from other mail matter and shall make regu- 
lations for the delivery thereof, the same having been received at its place of destina- 
tion before the said first day of the week, during such limited portion of the day, as 
shall best suit the public convenience and least interfere with the due observance of 
the day as one of worship and rest : And provided further, That when there shall have 
been an interruption in the due and regular transmission of the mails it shall be law- 
ful to so far examine the same when delivered as to ascertain if there be such matter 
therein for lawful delivery on the first day of the week. 

Sec. 3. That the iDroseeution of commerce between the States and with the Indian 
tribes, the same not being work of necessity, mercy, or humanity, by the transporta- 
tion of persons or property by land or water in such way as to interfere with or dis- 
turb the people in the enjoyment of the first day of the week, or any portion thereof, 
as a day of rest from labor, the same not being labor of necessity, mercy, or humanity, 
or its observance as a day of religious worship), is hereby prohibited, and any person 
or corporation, or the agent, servant, or employ^ of any person or corporation who 
shall willfully violate this section shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten nor 
more than one thousand dollars, and no service performed in the prosecution of such 
prohibited commerce shall be lawful, nor shall any comxieusation be recoverable or 
bo paid for the same. 

Sec. 4. That all military and naval drills, musters, and parades, not in time of active 
service or immediate preparation therefor, of soldiers, sailors, marines, or cadets of 
the United States on the first day of the week, except assemblies for the duo and or- 
derly observance of religious worship, are hereby prohibited, nor shall auy uuneces- 
sary labor bo performed or permitted in the military or naval service of the United 
States on the Lord's day. 

Sec. 5. That it shall be unlawful to pay or to receive payment or wages in any 
manner for service rendered or for labor xK-rformed or for the transportation of per- 
sons or of property in violation of the provisions of this act, nor shall any action lie 
for the recovery thereof, and v,^hen so paid, whether in advance or otherwise, the same 
may be recovered back by whoever shall first sue for the same. 

Sec. 6. That labor or service performed and rendered on the first day of the week 
in consequence of accident, disaster, or unavoidable delays in making the regular con- 
nections upon postal routes and routes of travel and transportation, the preservation of 
perishable and exposed property, and the regular and necessary transportation and de- 
livery of articles of food in condition for healthy use, and ruichl ransportatiou for short 
distances from one State, district, or Territory into another State, district, or Terri- 
tory ais by local laws shall bo dcoiared to be necessary for the jniblio good, shall not 
be deemed violations of this act, but the same shall be construed so far as possible to 
secure to the whole people rest from toil during the first day of the week, their men- 
tal and moral culture, and the religious observance of the Sabbath day. 

The hearing will i)roceed in such order as the friends of the bill may 
desire. 

STATEMENT OF SEV. WILBUE F. CEAFTB. 

Mr. Crafts. I have been requested by the various societies petition- 
ing for the passage of such a law as Senator Blair's bill is, in the main, 
to take charge of the hearing on their behalf. The Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union is first to be heard, after the introductory remarks; 
then th@ Illinois State Sabbath Association ; then representatives of 
the American Sabbath Union; after that a representative of the ISTa- 
tional Eeform Association ; then a representative of the Lutherans ; 
then of the Seventh Day Baptists. 

I shall speak mostly by documents. 

First, I wish to submit a portion of my former address to this com- 
mittee, which is contained in Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 108, 
Fiftieth Congress, first session, in the record of the preliminary hearing 
granted to the petitioners for a Sunday Best law. 

The petitions were in triplicate. One, regarding Sunday mails, is ad- 
dressed to Congress in these words : 

"We, the undersigned, citizens of the United States, hereby respectfully petition 
your honorable bodies to pass a law instructing the Postmaster-General to make no 
further contracts which shall include tho carriage of the mails on the first day of the 
week, and to provide that hereafter no mail matter shall be collected or distributed 
on that day. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 3 

The second petition, regarding intcrstato Sunday trains, was ad- 
dressed to Congress in tliese words : 

We, tlio undersigned, citizens of the United States, respectfully petition yonr lion- 
orable bodies to- forbid " interstate commerce " on the iirst day of the Avcek by railroad 
trains. 

The third, regarding Sunday parades, addressed as before, reads as 
follows : 

We, the undersigned, citizens of tlie United States, respectfully petition your bon- 
orable bodies to forbid military drills, musters, and x^aradea of United States cadets, 
soldiers, and marines on tbo iirst day of tbo week in times of peace, as interfering not 
only witli the soldier's right to the day of rest, but also with his rights of conscience. 

ADDRESS OF REY. WILBUR E. CRAFTS. 

Mr. Chairman and Senators of the committee, we come not as Chris- 
tians asking for a union of Church and State, but as American citizens, 
askiug for the the iierpetnation of one of our most important institu- 
tions, the American Sabbath, to whose protected rest and culture of 
conscience and hours for thought, we owe, mote than to almost auythiog 
else, the fact that we are not, like France, a republic "good for this day 
only," lyiug uneasily in the crater of a not-extinct volcano. 

The requirements of religion and the requirements of civil] aw some- 
times coincide. For instance, both forbid murder and incest and thiev- 
ing, and in most cases needless Sunday toil 5 but it has been well said 
that while religion forbids these things as sins against God, the civil 
law forbids them as crimes against man. 

We come to you as a Committee on Education in behalf of what we 
call the workingman's college — the American Sabbath—without which 
the American voter would be incapable of self-government, like the 
adult infants of Continental despotisms, who are content to take amuse- 
ment in place of liberty. The hours afforded to the workingman for 
thought by twenty-one years of quiet Sabbaths are equal to the study 
hours of a college course. In the reforms of illiteracy which this com- 
mittee contemplates, the influence of quiet Sabbaths upon the diffusion 
of knowledge and of conscientiousness can not safely be ignored. 

We come to you more especially as the Committee on Labor in be- 
half of a million and a quarter * of our fellow-countrymen who are held 
in tlie Egyptian bondage of Sabbathless toil, chiefly through the influ- 
ence of the Government — the post-ofiice giving an example for the 
opeuiug of other places of business on the street, and the mail train 
opening the way for the running of other Sunday trains. 

Hon. Carroll D. Wright, in his report on Sunday work in Massachu- 
setts a year or two since, showed from the stand-point of the very mas- 
ter of labor reform that it has no other department more important 
than this. He said to me yesterday, ^' JvTo man likes to work on Sun- 
day." He is now making investigations on a large scale in regard to 
railroad work, and especially in regard to the oppression of the health 
and consciences of the great army of workingmen by needless Sunday 
toil. The ei^ht-liour law for postmen— the measure which has already 
j);iK9ed the House of Jtcpresentatives and I suppose is now before the 
Senate, is not as important, though I indorse it, as this proposition for 
a six-day law for postmen. I believe they should have both, but a man 
can get more rest by having one whole day in every w^eek to be with his 
family than by an equal reduction of labor scattered through the seven- 
day round of toil. 



* A later document shows that this was an uuderstatemout. 



4 SUNDAY REST BILL, 

Williani Black ISteele, ii! the March nnmber of the North American 
JRevievv^ sbows iliat the Iioliday Sunday has more work than play. Re- 
cei!t> investigations of ti'.e- Goroiau Government, which had become 
alarmed at the increase of Sunday work, and was receiving protests 
from workings en, even from socialists, lu regard to this alarming in- 
crease — these investigations have shown that even in the factories of 
Germany 57 per cent, of the employes work on Sunday, and 77 per 
cent, of those engaged in traiisportation and trade. It is this work-a- 
day Sunday which the continental governments are seeking to be rid 
of, against which we would have our Government take preventive 
liieasurea, because it is easier to xjrevent than to repent. This move- 
ment is in harmony with the awakening American spirit, whose watch- 
word is, "America for American institutions." 

What we ask is that Congress (and here I state the whole proposi- 
tion ia brief) shall, as far as the national jurisdiction extends, first 
among the employes of the Government and then in the wider domain 
of interstate commerce, prohibit all needless Sunday work. 

1 wish to call attention to the fact that while Congress passes resolu- 
tions in favor of workingmen, it is the very Pharoah among employers. 
I do not know of any class of employes, except those in the postal ser- 
vice, who are worked from thirteen to sixteen hours a day. They have 
to leave their babies asleep in the morning and can not return until 
they are asleep at night, with night watching and Sunday work added 
to this heavy load. We had in ^ew York what were called " the man- 
kiiler cars,'' the men being required on alternate weeks to work for 
seven days, eighteen hours per day, including the intervals for meals. 
Those hours have been cut down to twelve, leaving the Post- Office De- 
partment of the United States the dishonor of being the champion 
" man-killer." 

I wish, first, to suggest some improvements in the postal laws, which 
I am sure you will think practical (as the Postmaster-General did in 
one case when I called upon him yesterday), hoping that they can be 
at once put into the pending eight- hour bill as amendments. 

The changes I have to propose in the postal laws are based on corre- 
spondence with every State and Territory in the Union. Circulars 
were sent out three years ago, and again recently. 

1 believe I can show the committee, first of all, that the present postal 
laws leave too much to the discretion, or indiscretion, of the local post- 
master: for instance in the matter of the Sunday opening of the post- 
office. I will read the national law in regard to the opening of post- 
offices on Sunday, that you may see how a coach-and-four or more could 
be driveu through it. This is section 481 of the " Postal Laws and 
Eegulations," which was presented to me yesterday by the Postmaster - 
General : 

Wlien the mail arrives on Sunday he [the postmaster] will keep his office open for 
QUO hour or more — 

Twenty -four hours is "more," and some postmasters so interpret it— 
our own New York postmaster, for instance, and certain others — 

After the arrival and assortment thereof, if the public convenience require it, for 
the delivery of the same only. If it be received during the time of public vrorship, 
the open! Df; of the post-office will bo delayed until services have closed. He need not 
open his oiaice during the day of Sunday if no mails arrive after the closing of the 
olBce on Saturday and before 6 o'clock Sunday afternoon. While open, stamps may 
1)6 .sold to any one applying for them; but money-orders must not be issued nor paid, 
i!or letters registered on that day. Delivery on Sunday must not be restricted to box 
holders, but made to all who call while the office is open; 



SUNDAY EEST BILL. 5 

To show tbe actual interpretation of this loose law, let me tell yon 
wliat are my reports from various parts of tlie country. I have letters 
from the Saint Louis postmaster, the Chicago postmaster, the New York 
l)OStmaster, the Philadelphia postmaster, and also reports from four 
smaller cities and towns in most of the States. 

Postmaster Pearson, of New York City, in a letter to me, dated April, 
17, 1884, said: 

One-lialf the entire clerical and carrier force of tliis office is on duty during a por- 
tion of each Sunday in alternate sections. The superintendents and other officers, 
myself included, being' present during" a part of every Sunday. At this office and its 
branches about 700 persons are employed during a portion of each Sunday. Practi- 
cally, the general delivery of this office is never closed. 

In a letter dated March 28, 1888, Postmaster Pearson says of the 
above : 

The statements are still true, except that somewhat less than one-half the cleri- 
cal force is employed on Sunday. The total number of clerks and carriers on duly 
on Sunday is, perhaps, about 800. All kinds of mail are delivered on call on Sun- 
days. All second-class matter offered is received. Stan.ps are sold during limited 
hours at branch offices, and in limited quantities at any time at the general post- 
office. 

Assistant Postmaster Henry Drake, of Philadelphia, in a letter to 
me, dated April 3, 1888, says : 

There are employed in this office 995 persons. Of this number but 52 do not 
■work on Sundays. Four hundred and thirty-eight work on certain Sundays, aver- 
aging, perhaps, one Sunday in three, the average time of work beinp; six hours. 
Every class of mail matter, except money-order, registered, or special-delivery letters, 
is handled on Sunday. One of the general delivery windows is open the entire day, 
there being three windows usually from 9 a. m. to iO j). m. 

Postmaster Judd, of Chicago, in a letter to me dated March 31, 1888, 
says: 

Only about 15 per cent of the clerks connected with this office are off duty on Sun- 
days; that about 50 per cent, of the letter-carriers are off duty on that day, and the 
general-delivery clerks are ou duty on said day from 10,30 a. m. to 1 p. m. All 
classes of mail matter, with the exception of registered mail, are delivered to those 
who may call between the hours of 11.30 a. m. and 12.30 p. m. Persons who have 
lock-boxes and drawers in this office can get their mail at any time on Sundays be- 
tween the hours of 8 a. m. and 10 p. m., and the clerks in connection therewith are 
on duty Sundays from about 10 a. m. to 1 p. m. 

[From another source we learn that Postmaster Judd has stopped 
the Sunday sale of stamps.] 

Postmaster Eiley, of Cincinnati, in a letter to me, dated April 4, 
1888, states, in answer to questions, that of 301 employes only 14 never 
work on Sundays; that the box delivery and general delivery are open 
from 9.30 to 11 a. m. ; that stamps are sold from 0.30 to 11 a. m., and 
from 6.30 to 7 p.m.; that "special delivery letters are delivered"; that 
25 mails are received on Sunday as against 64 on week days ; that mail 
is not delivered at the branch offices, but only at the general office. 

Postmaster Hyde, of Saint Louis, through Assistant Postmaster 
McHenry, in letter of March 30, 1888, informs me that of tlie 425 em- 
ployes in that office, only the 12 in the money-order division never work 
on Sundays; that 190 carriers and 60 distributers average live hours 
of Sunday work; that general delivery and box delivery are open from 
11.30 a. m. to 1 x). m. 

The same contrasts that appear in these offices of the highest grade, 
my reports show in every other grade. One ofiice opens once, for an 
hour only; another of the same grade opens twice, for two hours each 
time. One opens only before the hour of church ; another, only during 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 

tixe hour of churcli. One sells stamps ; another of the same grade does 
not. One delivers special carrier letters; another of the same grade 
does not. One works the employes an average of two honrs ; another 
of six. 

The Postmaster-General agrees with me and says tliat it should not 
be ])ossible for aay postmaster in this country to run the United States 
post office as a rival and competitor and antagonist of the churches. 
The law allows the post-office to be kept open through the church 
hours, unless the first mail of the day comes daring those hours. If it 
comes five minutes or more before the church service begins, the post- 
office can be ran, and is run, in many cases, ail tb rough church hours 
as the rival and antagonist and the competitor of the churches. We 
do not believe in '^Church and State/' nor do we believe in State against 
Church. 

A law forbidding the opening the United States post-office during the 
usual hours of public worship would remedy this difficalty, and would 
be better than nothing ) but we desire more than this. 

The law should also take from the local i3ostmaster the power to keep 
his employes^ at work at such hours as would prevent them from going 
to church. 

A new branch superintendent has been sent to one of the branch ofBlces 
in Kew York City within a few weeks. The previous superintendent had 
left the employes free during the forenoon, so that those who wished were 
able to attend church, the afternoon being sufficient for the work to be 
done. The new superintendent, partly to be enterprising^ partly because 
he thought the postmen 'would like to go on excursions on Sunday after- 
noons, though they had not said so, discriminates against the churches 
in favor of the Sunday picnics by transferring the Sunday work from the 
afternoon to the morning church hour— an instance of v.'hat is possible 
anywhere under our present loose law. 

The discretion of the local postmaster is also too great in regard to 
the amount of Sunday work he can require of his employes. In some 
offices the amount is double and treble what it is in other offices of the 
same grade. If the selling of stamps on Sunday can be dispensed with 
in Chicago, it can be dispensed with everywhere. If special-delivery 
messengers can be allowed their Sunday rest in Philadelphia, why not 
in Cincinnati % 

The sale of stamps on Sunday and the sending out of carriers with 
special-delivery letters and parcels (sec. 688) ought not to be left to the 
discretion or caprice of the local postmaster, but uniformly forbidden 
as needless Sunday work. 

The individual postmaster now decides whether the special-delivery 
messenger, Vv^ho works from 7 a. m. to 11 p.m. on week days, shall spend 
the same long hours on Sunday carrying parcels at 12 or 15 cents apiece, 
as an express for law-breaking merchants who keep at business on Sun- 
day. When this practice has become common in one place it will soon 
become common in all, and when special delivery by carriers becomes 
common, general delivery by carriers on Sunday will follow almost as 
a matter of course. Workingmen and humanitarians in Europe are try- 
ing to stop carrier deliveries just when we are beginning to have them. 
Let us not do what we shall want to undo. It is easier to prevent than 
to repent. 

Another point in which the local postmasters, in large cities at least, 
need restraint. The postmaster of a large city can send out Sunday 
mails on newspaper trains to scores of surrounding towns where the 
post-office employes have had Sunday rest, thus making more Sunday 



SUNDAY EEST BILL. 7 

work, not only in his own office but in many others. Postmaster Pear- 
son has clone this on his own resjionsibility, as he admits in a letter to 
me dated April 17, iSSJ:. ■ Doubtless other city postmasters have done 
the same. The law ought to be changed to make such increasing of 
Sunday work by local postmasters impossible. 

No one defends the handling of business circulars and packages on 
the Sabbath so as to deprive men of their culture of conscience and 
their hours at home. 

Some of the evils I have mentioned inight be removed by such a law 
as is proposed in a "Eeport from the Select Committee on Sunday 
Postal Labor" presented to the House of Commons Angust 10, 1887. 
The committee was appointed because of the numerous petitions to 
Parliament against the growing evil of Sunday work in the postal 
service in England. The British have gone a little further than we 
have in Sunday postal work, and they are trying to get back. The re- 
port giv^s the remedies which the committee recommend : 

(1) That the collection, dispatch, and the delivery on Sunday of books, 
circulars, and printed matter other than newspapers be discontinued. 

(2) No man shall be on duty more than alternate Sundays. As in 
our country, some postmasters kept their men employed seven Sundays 
in eight and six Sundays in eight and three Sundays in eight, and there 
was no uniformity. The report also recommends that all the postal 
employes be relieved from work on alternate Sundays. There, as here, 
the work had been different in every office from every other, some em- 
ployes working every Sunday, some seven Sundays out of eight, and 
some only one in two. The British Government steps in and says, 
"We are not going to have these distinctions made, not only between 
postal servants and other servants of Government, but between one 
post-office ana another, and we say that the men must rest on alternate 
Sundays." 

Another recommendation is, that the question whether the post-office 
of a town or city shall be open at all on Sunday shall be decided by local 
option. 

A law covering the points I have already mentioned, it seems to me, 
would commend itself to every humane and just man; protecting the 
church services from i)Ost-office competition ; protecting the employes 
from beiug kept at woi k ac such hours as would keep them from church- 
going ; reducing the Sunday work by stopping the handling of circu- 
lars and packages -, insisting that all employees shall rest on alternate 
Sundays ; and jcaving it to every town to decide the question of opening 
the office on Sunday, which would cause a wholesome agitation every- 
where of the question of Sunday mails, and so lead, we believe, to the 
entire cessation of Sunday postal work through a national law. 

Now 1 come to the second division of my discussion of postal reforms, 
kindred to the lirst, but i)erhaps more radical. I believe the laiv should 
restrict the autoci atic i^ower of the Postmctsier- General. The Post-Office 
Department of a re[)ubiic should not be an autocracy. It is at present 
a monarchy, and not a limited monarcliy. 

In 1S28 and 1820 there were 407 petitions from 21 States, asking for 
the cessation of all Sunday work in connection with the mails. ("Sab- 
bath for Man," p. 272.) The predominating sentiment of the nation 
seemed to be in favor of this humane request. Christians desired the 
nation's example to be put on the side of Sabbath-keeping, and work- 
ingmen desired the nation's example to be arrayed against needless 
Sunday work. > iji 



8 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

What is the answer which that army of petitioners got from the 
Postmaster-General, whose powers were then just about the same as 
now°^ 

He replied in the Epirifc of a Eussian autocrat and in the rhetoric of 
a western editor: 

So long as the silver rivers flow and the green grass grows and the oceanic tides 
rise and fall on the first day of the week, so long shall the mails of the Republic be 
circulated on that day. 

The whole history of the matter is in this book (''The Sabbath for 
Man/' p. 271), which I shall present to each of the committee. The 
arguments then used against Sunday mails are most of them appro- 
nriato to-day. 

Postmaster-General Jewell has the honor, or dishonor, of ordering a 
Sunday, delivery by carriers in New York City. He was a Christian 
man, and thought he was only yielding to the pressure of public senti- 
ment and the needs of the Nineteenth Century. One delivery was 
made. Postmen took letters for ministers to their i)ulpitS5 in the midst 
of their sernions, to show the barbarity of their new Sunday tasks. 
There swept down upon Washington such a storm of protests Irom the 
Christian business men of New York against this increase of Sunday 
postal work that before the second Sunday the order was repealed. 
Not long since Postmaster-General Yilas issued an order that letters 
and i)ackages bearing special-delivery stamps should bo delivered on 
Sundays as on other days. When a Sabbath Association secretary 
came to General Yilas expressing the i)rotest of the Christians of Phila- 
delphia against that order, he was answered, '' What I have done, I 
have done;'' and it was only by the aid of the President that the order 
was changed from a positive requirement that all postmasters in spec- 
ial-delivery offices should send oat the special delivery messengers on 
Sunday to an absurd permission to each postmaster to do in the matter 
as he pleased, so that the question whether messengers on duty from 7 
a. m. to 11 p. m. six days in the week shall be on duty for the same bar- 
barous and absurd hours on Sunday also, in this age of the telegraph, 
is left to the caprice of each local postmaster. 

W^hat we want in this particular respect is a law that shall prohibit 
any delivery of mail en Sunday by carriers. It is bad enough to have 
the work done in the office, even with the limitations of which I have 
spoken, but we ask at least (and this is better than nothing) that the 
law shall protect us against the possibility of any Sunday delivery by 
any kind of carriers. We want more than this, and I shall now make 
a full statement of our demand in regard to Sunday mails, which we 
expect to keep asking for until we get it. 

We ash that a laiv shall he passed instructing the Fostma^ster- General to 
malcG no further contracts ivhich shall include the carriage of the mcAlson 
the Sahhathy and to provide that hereafter no mail matter shall he collected 
and distributed on that day. You ask, " What if a letter calling a son 
to the bedside of his dying mother should be delayed twenty-four hours 
by stopping mails?" Did you never hear of the telegraph— soon to be 
the nation's '' fast m'ailf Such emergency letters, that now are deliv- 
ered on Sunday, may go by telegraph on Saturday. 

Senator Payne. Then you do not j)ropose to interfere with the tele- 
graph ? 

Mr. Crafts. I would have it as at Toronto— all telegraph operators 
resting on Sunday, except a few men at the central office for emergen- 
cies — each man's turn for Sunday work coming''onry once in six weeks 
or more. As to business letters, some of the most prosperous cities in 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 9 

the world have no Sontlay work in their post-offices. I have a letter 
in my hand recently received from the postmaster at Toronto, a city 
as widely extended as most of our large cities^ though not as thickly 
populated ; a cit^^ of 140,000, which has grown as fast as almost any 
city of our country, and which is second to none in its moral record. 
There, with all the conditions of a large city, this is the statement, dated 
Toronto, March 20, 1888, and signed John Carruthers, assistant post- 
master : 

No clerk is required to do any work in this office on Sunday. Our office closes to 
the public at 7 ]). ni. on Saturday, and is not open again until 7 a. ni. on Monday. 
Coiihcquently no mail matter is delivered on Sunday, neither by carrier nor through 
the boxes. Our sorteis ail stop work before 12 on Saturday night, and do not resume 
duty until 12 p. m. on Sunday. 

Nothing goes to pieces. The rule gives all an equal chance. 'No 
business man can gel ahead of his competitor by getting his Sunday 
mail, and* practicing for the insane asylum by Sunday work. All rest, 
with no loss to any one 

Perhj-ips Toronto seems too provincial for men who come from larger 
cities. So let me give you the facts about London : 

Within a radius of .'S miles from the general post-office in London no inland letters 
are carried, sorted, delivered, or dispatched on the Lord's Day (*' Sabbath for Man," 
p.2SG). 

London rests its postal employes, and yet business suffers no conges- 
tion. 

Senator Payne. Have you seen the statement lately made by author- 
ity that London on Sunday is the most immoral and dissipated city in 
the world? 

Mr. Crafts. That is due to the liquor drinking ; not to the fact that 
the mails are closed. 

Senator Payne. In other words, closing the mails on Sunday does 
not reform the city ? 

Mr. Crafts. Not entirely, but it reforms the men in the postal serv- 
ice. It saves them from the oppression of conscience which makes men 
ready to go into all sorts of crime. 

Senator Pay^ne. Do the post-office employes there go to church when 
they do not have to attend the post-office ? 

Mr. Crafts. A postmaster recently said to me, " When men have 
to work a part of Sunday they do not usually go to church the rest of 
the day," I know one cause of this. They are ill at ease in conscience 
about Sunday work. I never met an engineer or a postal clerk who 
was not troubled about his Sunday work. His conscience is offended ; 
he feels that he is regularly breaking one law of God, and sometimes 
thinks he might as well break ten commandments as one. Going to 
church only tills him with self-reproach in regard to the crime which 
the Government requires of him, and not being courageous enough to 
give up his place rather than his sin he stays away from what would 
remind him of it; and so those who handle the nation's wealth are 
almost whollj^ destitute of the culture of conscience, which none need 
more than they. 

There is no reason for running a Sunday mail, as you see, not even 
for business letters. Certainly the Government should not keep its 
postal employes at work on Sunday for the benefit of the Sunday 
newspapers. Weekly newspapers do not ask it. 

As to Sunday parades, we ask that the Sunday morning inspection 
and the Sunday afternoon parades shall be stopped, because they are 



10 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

infriDgements of the soldier's riglit to Sunday rest, and also of his 
rights of conscience. Tiiough the number of our soldiers is small and 
the secular duties required of them on Sunday are not very wearisome, 
we think the nation's example in this matter is im^jortant. 

^ow, a few words about interstate Sunday trains. 

In the first place, the National Government is the only power that 
can accomplish this largest of labor reforms. In Connecticut they have 
recently emancipated ten thousand railway employes from Sunday toil 
by a law prohibiting excursion and freight trains on Sunday. No trains 
of any kind are allowed except morning and evening, and even then the 
railroad commissioners may allow only such trains as they think are 
required by considerations of mercy and necessity. They allow milk 
trains and Sunday newspaper trains, evidently thinking that babes can 
not live one day without fresh milk, nor men without fresh supplies of 
scandal. 

Mail trains are certainly not works of necessity or mercy, but the 
State has no power to stop the nation's Sabbath -breaking in its borders. 

But in these State reforms ''the interstate difiiiculty met them at 
every point." And so in every State where railroad managers or the 
State authorities would reduce Sunday work on the railroads, they are 
impeded by the fact that the National Government must co-operate in 
order to make the reform complete. 

I do not speak as a minister on the subject of railroads, but I bring 
to your notice the statements of railroad men. 

In 1883, the President of the Michigan Central Railway wrote : 

Michigan Central Company, 

Detroit, Mich,, May 14, 1883. 
To the Editors of the Bailway Age : 

I have your letter of May 11, relative to the action lately taken by the president 
of the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago Railway Company, in ordering the sus- 
pension of all trains upon the Sabbath, and note your request that I shall reply to 
certain questions as stated in your letter. 

(1) If all railroad companies competing for the same class of traffic, from and to 
certain points, were in accord, it would be prac ticable to a very large extent to 
abandon the running of railway trains on the Sabbath day. The chief difiiculty is 
that in these days of sharp conipetition, time has become such an important element 
that if one railroad company should voluntarily cease its traffic for one day during 
the week, while others continue, it would lose largely thereby. Yet, for example, 
were each of the trunk lines to absolutely refuse to exchange traffic ot any kind with 
their connections, from 6 p. m. Saturday until Monday morning, it would be a simple 
matter for these trunk lines, as well as for their western connections, to so arrange 
the movement of traffic as to practically do away with the running of Sunday trains. 

(2) There is no question as to the desirability of prohibiting Sunday work on rail- 
ways. The law of nature, to say nothing of the higher law, requires that men should 
have rest one day in seven. Is there any reason why a railroad engineer or con- 
ductor is not entitled to his rest as much as a merchant or manufacturer ? 

(3) This company has endeavored to so arrange the runs of its trainmen and engi- 
neers as to bring them home on Sunday ; but little can be done in that direction with- 
out the concerted action on the part of all companies interested in the same traffic. 

(4) I'do not believe at the end of the year the loss in traffic would bo appreciable 
were all Sunday work stopped; and in the better morals of the men, the railway 
companies would be abundantly paid for doing away with the work on this day. 

(5) While the public would no doubt at first be dissatisfied at the cessation ut Sun- 
day work, and would claim injury thereby in the matter of detention to freight and 
delay to mails, it is difficult; to see how much injury could really exist were the practice 
of doing away with Sunday work made uniform on all roacls. As an example, at one 
time it was thought necessary for each one of the Omaha roads to run a train Irom 
Chicago Sundays; after a while this was changed so that a tram left each Sunday 
on one only of the three roads. This caused at first some dissatisfaction, but it soon 
passed away, and the result of the experiment, so far as I have been able to learn, 
was entirely satisfactory. ^ ^ 

Looking at the question from either a moral or economical staud-pomt, no candid 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 11 

person can nplioltl tlio rnnning of trains on Sunday. What is there in the essence of 
a railroad company different irom any other bnsiness which will reiinire au exception 
to he made of it and its employes to worlc when others are allowed and expected to 
rest i 

The elTeot of this constant and uevor-endini!; work is not only injurious to the men 
themselves hut most deplorable to their families. If it is true, as Lord Bacon says, 
that a man who luis a family has given a hostage to fortune, it is equally true that he 
should bo allowed to live at'least part of his time with those for whom he has to care, 
and certainly should have at least one day in every seven, which under our system of 
railway labor he can not have, to devote to his own family and private matters. 

To bring about a cessation of Sunday work now would be much less difficult than 
it would have been a few years since. All over the country railway companies are 
grouping themselves into associations for the exchange of traffic, the maintenance of 
rates, and the better carrying out of agreements, such as, for example, the trunk line 
committee, the joint executive committee, the Southwestern Railway Association, and 
many others. If these companies can come together on short notice to arrange for 
any and all questions of mutual interest, it would be a simple matter, were this ques- 
tion of Sunday work properly considered, to bring about a reform in the same. 

I am glad you have taken the matter up, for I believe if it is presented to our man- 
agers in its best light, whether from a moral or economical stand-point, a few mo- 
ments' reflection will show to each of them that we are all committing a fearful mis- 
take in allowing the continuance and rapid growth of this Sunday work. 
Yours, truly, 

H. B, Ledyard, 

Fresidcnt. 

The Kail way Age says editorially, la the same issue with this letter 
(May 24, 1883) : 

Mr. Ledyard's conviction that he and other railway managers are all committing a 
fearful mistake in allowing the continuance and rapid growth of this Sunday labor is 
held, we believe, by the great majority of railway officers, and it is to be hoped that 
in their perusal and public consideration of the great problems of railway manage- 
ment they will give that serious attention to this subject which its importance de- 
mands. 

The '' accord" by which '' the ruDiiing of railway trains on the Sab- 
bath" might be abaDdoned can not be secured permanently by any pool 
or agreement of managers, but only through a national law, such as~we 
have abundant assurance would be welcomed by many railroad man- 
agers who laoli the moral courage to stop Sunday trains while rival lines 
continue theiu. 

E. S. Hayes, a railroad president, says : 

Until the proper action is taken by the public in the form of amended laws and re- 
vised rulings, relieving the roads iiom liabilities resulting from the suspension of 
transportation, a certain amount of Sunday labor must of necessity be j^erformed. 
(•• Sabbath for Man," p. 305). 

Compulsory Sunday rest for all would gratify railroad managers as 
well as railroad men, with no loss to either. 

General A. S. Diven, a prominent railroad man, recently said in the 
Christian Union, January 5, 1888 : 

(1) The traffic will be substantially the same per week whether moved in one hun- 
dred and sixty-eight or one hundred and forty-four hours. [That is, in seven days 
or six.] 

(2) It can bo moved in one hundred and forty-four hours. 

(3) The extra cost will be fully compensated for l)y the improved service. 

(4) There is no public necessity icquiring Sunday service. 

In a recent letter to me General Diven says: 

There is no valid excuse for railroad traffic on Sunday, either for mails, passengers, 
or freight. Why should not traffic on our railroads rest with all the other business ac- 
tivities ? None of the other great interests are paralyzed by resting one day in seven, 
nor would any follow the suspension of railroad traffic. Is the transmission of mails a 
necessity ? The best jand most successl"ul business men I have over known never open 



12 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

their letters on Sunday. If there ever was a necessity for the Sunday mail service, it 
ceased with the telegram. If ever there was a necessity for moving perishable arti- 
cles on Sunday, it has been removed by the refrigerator-car. My'article in the Chris- 
tiau Union was intended as a challenge to railroad managers to justify their manage- 
ment. When that challenge is accepted I believe it can be successfully met by men 
of practical experience. 

Why may not railroad passengers be detained one day for tlie same 
reason that steam- boat passengers are often quarantined for a fort- 
night — for the i:)iiblic health. The Senate has now before it an inter- 
state commerce bill to protect the health of cattle. Why not add 
another to protect the health of more than half a million railroad men? 

Interstate-commerce reforms thus far have been chiefly for the bene- 
fit of manufacturers and merchants, protecting them against monopo- 
lists, who would use the railroads as battering-rams to destroy their 
coini>etitors. We ask now for interstate-commerce reforms to protect 
railroad men themselves against the railroads being used as battering- 
rams to destroy their health and morals by Sunday work. 

The only i>urpose in running trains on Sunday is to make money, to 
fatten the bank account of millionaires, already too much favored by 
our laws. If any work for gain (not also work of necessity or charity) 
is allowed, in the name of equity all work for gain should be allowed. 
The law that forbids a poor widow to sell wholesome books on the Sab- 
bath and allows the millionaire to sell railroad tickets is itself a crime — 
a crime against equity. Anarchy fattens on such injustice. 

The plea that these Sunday trains are necessary to carry sorrowing 
fathers to their dying sons is often urged, but the answer is that it is 
vastly better for a boy now and then to die without the sentimental 
comfort of his fathers presence, which can not save his life, than that 
thousands of men should die before their time by seven-day toil and the 
vices to which Sunday work so often leads. 

As to the excuse, " The public demand the Sunday trains," I answer, 
^'Thepoc/ic^ demands them" in blindness to its own interests. 

Five hundred men with money in their hands, asking for a Sunday 
train, make a " demand" to which a railroad manager is more respon- 
sive than the petition of 50,000 citizens against the train in the interest 
of public morality and of the employes. Sunday cars are r;ars of Jugger- 
naut, crushing health and conscience beneath their wheeiSf: 

Every railroad manager and every legislator who is not deaf to the 
signs of the times must hear in the recent railroad riots a ^' demand," 
loud as the roar of Waterloo, not for more Sunday trains, but for none. 
How quickly these train-men become train -wreckers ! Eecently the 
rioters only needed a word from the railroad King Arthur, ordering a 
general strike of engineers, to enable them to plunge this whole nation 
into a social and commercial anarchy, compared to which 1877, and the 
bomb-throwing in Chicago, and the New York blizzard were but gentle 
hints. 

In 1877 engineers themselves said that train wrecking and Sabbath 
wrecking were closely connected. Kailroad men feel that having broken 
one commandment they might as well go through the list. 

" When you force a conductor to break the Fourth Commandment, 
you must not be surprised if he goes on to break the Eighth also," said 
William E. Dodge to his directors, when urging the discontinuance of 
Sunday trains. 

Perhaps you wonder that railroad men do not themselves appeal for 
Sunday rest. They have done so, and ceased only through despair of 
results. . r 

Four hundred and fifty engineers of the iJTew York Central Eailway 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 13 

a few years ago sent to their master a most eloquent and pitiful appeal 
lor SiiDday rest : 

After pointing out how Sunday running had become " a great hardshij)" they con- 
tinue: "^Wo liaYO borne this grievance patiently, hoping every succeeding year that 
it would decrease. We are willing to submit to any reasonable privation, mental or 
physical, to assist the olBcers of your company to achieve a financial triumph, but 
after a long and weary service, we do not see any signs of relief, and we are forced 
to come to ycu with our trouble, and most respectfully ask you to relieve us from 
Sunday labor, so far as it is in your power to do so. Our objections to Sunday labor 
are: 

(1) This never-ending labor ruins our health and prematurely makes us feel worn 
out like old lueu, and we are sensible of our inability to perform our duty as well 
when we work to an excess. 

(2) That the customs of all civilized countries, as well as all laws, human and 
Divine, recognize Sunday as a day of rest and recuperation ; and notwithstanding 
intervals of rest might be arranged for us on other days than Sunday, we feel that by 
so doing we would be forced to exclude ourselves from all church, family, and social 
privileges that other citizens enjoy. 

(3) Nearly ail of the undersigned have children that they desire to have educated 
in everything that will tend to make them good men and women, and we can not 
help but see that our example in ignoring the Sabbath day has a very demoralizing 
influence ui^on them. 

(4) Because we believe the best interests of the company we serve, as well as ours, 
will be promoted thereby, and because we believe locomotive engineers should 
occupy as high social and religious positions as men in any other calling. We know 
the question will be considered : How can this Sunday work be avoided with the im- 
mense and constantly increasing traffic ? We have watched this matter for the past 
twenty years. We have seen it grow from its intancy until it has arrived at its now 
gigantic proportions, from one train on the Sabbath until we now have about thirty 
each way ; and we do not hesitate in saying that we can do as much work in six days, 
with the seventh for rest, as is now done. It is a fact observable by all connected 
with the immediate running of freight trains that on Monday freight is comparatively 
light; Tuesday it strengthens a little, and keeps increasing until Saturday, and Sun- 
days are the heaviest of the week. The objection may be olfered that if your lines 
stop the receiving points from other roads will be blocked up. In reply, wo would 
most respectfully suggest, that when the main lines do not run tributaries would only 
be too glad to follow the good example. The question might also arise, if tralBc is 
suspended twenty-four hours will not the company lose one-seventh of its profits ? In 
answer, wo will })ledge our experience, health, and strength, that at the end of the 
year our employers will not lose one cent, but, on the contrary, will be the gainers 
financially. 

Our reasons are these : At present, the duties of your locomotive engineers are in- 
cessant, day after day, night succeeding night, Sunday and all, rain or shine, with 
all the fearful inclctncncies of a vigorous winter to contend with. The great strain 
of both mental and physical faculties constantly employed has a tendency in time to 
impair the requisites so necessary to make a good engineer. Troubled in mind, jaded 
and worn cut in body, the engineer can not give his duties the attention they shoul(* 
have in order to best advance his employer's interests. We venture to say, not on this 
broad continent, iu any branch of business or traffic, can be found any class in the 
same position as railroad men. 

They are severed from associations that all hold most dear, debarred from the op- 
portunity of worship, that tribute man owes to his God; witnessing all those pleas- 
ures accorded to otliers, which are the only oases in the deserts of this life, and with 
no prospect of relief. 

We ask you to aid us. Give us the Sabbath for rest after our week of laborious du- 
ties, and wo jjledge you that, with a system invigorated by a season of repose, by a 
brain eased and cleared by hours of relaxation, we can go to work with more energy 
more mental and ])]!ysical force, and can and will accomplish more work and do it 
better, if possible, in six days than wo can now do iu seven. AVo can give you ten 
days jn six if you require it, if we can only look forward to a ceitain ])eriod of rest. 
In conclusion, we hope and trust that, in conjuncriou with other gcntleinciu of the 
trunk lines leading to the sea-board, you will he able to accouiplieh something that 
will ameliorate our condition. 

That pl<ia, which greed would not hoar, let Congress receive as the 
plea of all railroad men. Hon. Carroll D. Wright says that the only 
railroad men who want to have work done on Sunday are those who do 
not the work, only but pocket the dividends. 



14 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

The railroad managers, as I have shown, would many of them wel- 
come a law giving their roads a day of rest. Competition is the only 
thing which makes it seem necessary to keep their trains going on Sun- 
day. In Canadti Sunday trains are allowed to run only on account of 
American competition, and the strict Sabbath-keepers of the Dominion 
would quickly stoi> them when that excuse was removed. The Penn- 
sylvania Eaih^oad has reduced its Sunday trains within a few years, and 
so have some other roads. 

¥/hat we want is that this matter shall be taken out of the realm of 
individual caprice, and that all railroad men shall be equitably protected 
in their rights to Sunday rest, first by the National Government in its 
realm of interstate commerce^ thus removing the chief obstacle to carry- 
ing forward the reform in the realm of State laws. 

A new king, in attempting to beautify his capital, came on a massive 
antique building which did not quite suit his fancy, and so began to 
tear it down. When a stone or two had fallen he saw uncovered before 
Mm the inscription : ^' These gates with their country stand or fall," 
Astounded, he withdrew his destroying hand. Let not the nation itself 
by its Sabbath-breaking example in the mail and military service and 
by allowing Sunday work in its wider realm of interstate commerce, 
help to tear down the very citadel of morality and liberty, the Amer- 
ican Sabbath, built of Sinaitic granite and Plymouth rock, for ^' These 

GATES WITH THEIE COUNTRY STAND OB FALL." 



Second. I wish to submit a document showing the present extent of 
Sunday work, as follows : 

SUNDAY-WOEK STATISTICS. 
[Article by Eev. Wilbur F. Crafts in Journal of United Labor, December 6, 1888.] 

The census of 1880 gives 17,392,099 as the num!)er of persons in the 
United States then '• engaged in occupations of all kinds; " about half 
of the population above ten years of age or over (30,701,607.) Jews and 
•others who really abstain from labor and business on Saturday may 
be left out of the account, as all who profess to keep that day amount 
to but seven- tenths of 1 per cent, of the population, and so do not affect 
the result appreciably. The writer's effort has been to avoid any exag- 
geration in estimating the degree to which Sunday rest has been in- 
vaded in our country by the ever-increasing Sunday work. 

(1) Those engaged in the following occupations are reckoned as hav- 
ing unbroken Sunday rest in all parts of the United States : 

Of those engaged in agriculture: Apiarists (bee farmers), turpentine 
farmers, and laborers. 

Of those engaged in professional and personal services : Architects, 
artists and art teachers, auctioneers, recording 'clerks and copyists, col- 
lectors and claim agents, designers and draughtsmen, civil engineers, 
teachers, and scientific persons. 

Of those engaged in manufactures and mining : Agricultural implement- 
makers, apprentices to trades, artificial-flower makers, bag-makers, bas- 
ket-makers, dyers and scourers, bleachers, blind, door, and sash makers, 
boat-makers, bone and ivory workers, book binders and finishers, boot 
and shoe makers, bottle and mineral-water makers, box-factory opera- 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 15 

tives, brick and tile makers, bridge builders and contractors, britannia 
and japanned ^yare makers, broom and brash makers, builders and con- 
tractors, button-factory operatives, cabinet-makers, candle, soap, and 
tallow makers, car-makers, carpenters and joiners, carpet-makers, car- 
riage and wagon makers^ clerks and book-keepers in manufacturing 
houses, clock and watch makers, copper- workers, corset-makers, cotton- 
mill operatives, engravers, file makers, cutters and grinders, flax-dress- 
ers, fur- workers, galloon, gimp, and tassel makers, gilders, glove-makers, 
gold and silver workers, hair cleaners and drc^^sers (not barbers), har- 
ness and saddle makers, hat and cap makers, hosiery and knitting-mill 
operatives, lace-makers, lead and w ire workers, leather-case and pocket- 
book makers, manufacturers, masons (brick and stone), meat packers, 
curers, and picklers, mill and factory operatives, millers, milliners, dress- 
makers, seamstresses, mirror and picture frame-makers, nail-makers, 
organ makers, painters and varnishers, paper-mill operatives, pattern- 
makers, pianoforte makers and tuners, plasterers, potters, print-works 
operatives, pump makers, quarrymen, rag-pickers, railroad builders and 
contractors, roofers and slaters, rope and cordage operatives, rubber- 
factory operatives, saw and i)laning-mill operatives, sawyers, scale and 
rule makers, screw-makers, sewing-machine fa,ctory operatives, sewing- 
machine operators, shingle and lath makers, shirt, cuff, and collar 
makers, silk-mill operatives, starch-makers, stave, shook, and heading 
makers, steam-boiler makers, stove, furnace, and grate makers, straw- 
workers, tailors, and tailoresses, thread- mill operatives, tinners and 
tin- ware makers, tool and cutlery makers, trunk and valise makers, 
umbrella and parasol makers, upholsterers, wheelwrights, wire makers 
and workers, wood-choppers, wood turners and carvers, wooden-ware 
makers, woolen-mill operatives. 

Of tliose engaged in trade and transportation : Agents, bankers, and 
brokers, brokers (commercial), clerks and book-keepers in banks, clerks 
and book-keepers in insurance ofhces, employes of banks (not clerks), 
employees of insurance companies (not clerks), employes in warehouses, 
officials of banks, officials of insurance companies, packers, traders in 
cotton and wool, trailers in iron, tin, and copper wares, traders in junk, 
traders in leather, hides, and skius, traders in lumber, traders in mar- 
ble, stone, and slate, traders in music and musical instruments, traders 
in oils, p lint, and turpentine, traders in paper stock, weighers, gangers, 
and measurers. 

Tiie to:al number engaged in all these occupations is 2,900,865. 

(2) The following is a list of those occupations in which Sunday rest 
is only occasionally interfered with for worlc of mercy or necessity: 

0/ tJiose engaged in agricullnro : Agricultural laborers, farm and plan- 
tation overseers, farmers, and planters. 

Of those engaged in manufactures and mining : Plumbers and gas-fit- 
ters. 

The total number engaged in these occupations is 7,572,355. 

(3) The following is an estimate of the number who have Sunday 
rest in the occupations named: [Whole number in each occupation in 
parentheses.] 

Of those engaged in agriculture: Dairymen and dairy women, 948 
(8,948); florists, 5j0 (4,550); gardeners, nursery and vine growers, 
40,000 (51,482) ; stock drovers, 449 (3,449) ; stock herders, 98 (24,098) ; 
stock raisers, 10,000 (10,528). 

Of those engngcd in personal and professional services : Actors, 812 
(4,812); authors, lecturers, and literary persons, 1,000 (1,131); barbers 
and hair-dressers, 14,000 (44,851); billiard and bowling saloon-keepers, 



16 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

1,000 (1,543) ; chemists, assayers, and metallurgists, 1,000 (1,958) ; gov- 
ernment officials, clerks and employes (national, State, town), includ- 
iug postal service, customs, police, 5,331 (105,331) ; hunters, trappers, 
guides, and scouts, 12 (1,912) ; janitors, 2,763 (0,703) ; journalists, 4,308 
(12,308); laborers, 1,800,000 (1,859,223); launders and laundresses, 
121,000(121,942); lawyers, 60,000 (04,137); livery-stable keepers, 213 
(14,213) ; messengers, 985 (13,985) ; musicians (professional), 10,000 
(30,477) ; showmen and show- women, 2,000 (2,604). 

Of tiiosG engaged in manufacturing and mining : Bakers, 1,309 (41,309) ; 
blacksmiths, 170,000 (172,726); brass founders and workers, 10,000 
(11,568); butchers, 26,241 (50,000); charcoal and lime burners, 5,000 
(5,851) ; cheese-makers, 570 (4,570) ; chemical works employes, 2,000 
(2,923); cigar-makers, 56,000 (56,599); confectioners, 3,000^(13,692); 
coopers, 40,000 (49,138); distillers and rectifiers, 245 (3,245) ; employes 
not specified, 34,000 (34,536); engineers and firemen, 625 (79,625); fer- 
tilizing establishment operatives, 1,000 (1,383); fishermen and oyster- 
men, 10,000 (11,352); gas-works employes^ 695 (4,695); glass- v/orks op- 
eratives, 17,000 (17,934) ; gun and lock smiths, 10,000 (10,572) ; iron aud 
steel works and shop operatives, 14,000 (114,539); leather curriers, 
dressers, finishers, and tanners, 29,000 (29,842) ; lumbermen and rafts- 
men, 10,000 (30,651) ; machinists, 100,000 (101,130) ; marble and stone 
cutters, 32,000 (32,842); meat and fruit preserving employes, 2,000 
(2,860); mechanics (not specified), 7,000 (7,858); miners, 200,000 
(234,228) ; officials of manufacturing and mining companies, 8,000 
(8,198) ; oil mill and refinery operatives, 2,000 (3,929) ; oil-well ojjerators 
and laborers, 2,000 (7,340) ; paper-hangers, 4,000 (5,013) ; photographers, 
8,000 (9,990) ; printers, lithographers, and stereotypers, 36,000 (72,726) ; 
publishers of maps, books, and newspapers, 1,781 (2,781); quartz and 
stamp mill laborers, 441 (1,441) ; sail and awning makers, 2,000 (2,895) ; 
salt-makers, 1,000 (1,431) ; ship-carpenters, caulkers, riggers, and smiths, 
17,000 (17,452); sugar makers and refiners, 2,000 (2,327) ; tobacco-tac- 
tory operatives, 20,000 (20,446) ; others engaged in manufacturing and 
mining, 13,000 (13,542). 

Of those engaged i7i trade and transportation : Boatmen and watermen, 
368(20,368); clerks in stores, 300,000 (353,444); clerks and book-keep- 
ers in express companies, 856 (1,856) ; clerks and book-keepers in rail- 
road offices, 331 (12,000) ; commercial travelers, 158 (28,000) ; draymen, 
hackmen, teamsters, etc., 77,000 (177,586) ; employes and officials of 
trading and transportation companies, 702 (9,702) ; employes and offi- 
cials of express comi)anies (not clerks), 3,000 (13,004); employesof rail- 
road companies (not clerks), 6,000 (236,058) ; newspaper criers and car- 
riers, 374 (3,374) ; officials and employes of trading and transportation 
companies, 702 (9,702) ; officials of railroads, 69 (2,069) ; officials and 
employes of telegraph companies, 809 (22,000) ; officials and employes 
of telephone companies, 1,000 (1,197) ; porters and laborers in stores 
and warehouses, 30,000 (32,192) ; salesmen and saleswomen, 60,000 (72,- 
279) ; saloon-keepers and bartenders, 461 (68,461) ; shippers and freigbt- 
ers, 166 (5,166) ; steam-boat men and women, 365 (12,305) ; traders and 
dealers not specified, 112,000 (112,842) ; traders in books and station- 
ery, 4,000 (4,892) ; traders in boots and shoes, 9,000 (9,993) ; traders in 
cabinet-ware, 7,000 (7,419) ; traders in cigars and tobacco, 886 (11,886) ; 
traders in clothing, 8,000 (10,073) ; traders in coal and wood, 10,000 
(10,871); traders in crockery, china, glass, stoneware, 2,000 (2,373); 
traders in dry goods, fancy goods, etc., 45,000 (45,831) ; traders in gold 
and silverware and jewelry, 2,000 (2,305) • trailers in groceries, 20,000 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 17 

(101,849) ; traders in hats and caps, 4,000 (4,S09) ; traders in ice, 854 
(2,854) ; traders in liquors and wines, 500 (13,500) 5 traders in live-stock, 
10,000(12,596) 'j traders in music and musical instruments, 1,000 (1,900) ; 
traders in newspapers and periodicals, 29 (2,729); traders in produce 
and provisions, 20,000 (35,129) ; traders in real estate, 11,000 (11,253) ; 
traders in sewino' machines, (3,000 (6,577) ; others in trade and trans- 
portation, 100 (177). 

The total number estimated in this third group as having Sunday rest 
is 3,773,307. Add two previous groups, and we have 14,246,527; sub- 
tract from total number of wage- workers, and ice have three million one 
hundred and forty -five thousand five hundred and seventy-two deprived of 
Sunday rest in eighteen hundred and dgJity. Deduct from these those 
engaged in occupations usually considered works of religion, mercy, and 
necessity (although most of these are required to do twice as much 
Sunday work as is necessary): Clergymen, 64,698 ; clerks in hotels and 
restaurants, 10,916; domestic servants, 1,075,653 ; employ6s of cliarita- 
ble institutions, 2,396; employes in hotels and restaurants 77,413; 
hostlers, 31,697 ; hotel-keepers, 32,453; midwives, 2,183; nurses, 13,383; 
physicians and surgeons, 85,671; restaurant-keepers, 13,074; sextons, 
2,449; veterinary surgeons, watchmen, and private detectives, 13,384; 
police, 43,000; pilots, 3,770; sailors, 60,070; stewards and steward- 
esses, 22,803; toll-gate and bridge-keepers, 2,o03 ; traders in drugs and 
medicines, 27,704; undertakers, 5,113; total, 1,590,168. Deduct this 
from the total number deprived of Sabbath rest, and we have one million 
five hundred and fifty five tlcousand four hundred and four as the number 
regidarly engaged in needless icorlc for gain on Sunday in eighteen hundred 
and eighty. As the occupations in which this needless Sunday work 
occurs have grown very rapidly in the eight years since the census, the 
number engaged in needless Sunday tvorh to day can hardly bo less than a 
round two millions^ about one-tenth of the ivageicorlcers — one to every six 
families. 

To express the facts comprehensively, of this 2,000,000 about 100,000 
are in the nation's mail service; about 27,000 in the military service; 
about 500,000 are in the liquor business; another 500,000, at least, are 
kept at work on the day of rest by Sunday trains and Sunday papers, 
and the remaining 900,000 are mostly shop-keepers and their clerks, 
with a few miners and mechanics. 

For those engaged on Sunday on works of mercy and necessity every 
K)tate legislature should bo petitioned for a *' six-day law forbidding any 
one to hire another or be hired for more than six days per week, except 
in domestic service and the care of the sick and of live stock. For the 
2,000,000 engaged on Sunday in needless work for gain the first thing 
to be done is to get Congress to stop this Sunday work as far as its ju- 
risdiction extends, and then to secure the further legislation needed 
from the States, together witii good officers to enforce the laws. 

I submit, third, a numerical estiniate of the new petitions for a na- 
tional Sunday rest law soon to be presented to the Senate. They are 
in the following words : 

To the United Stales Senate : 

The undersigned, adulfc residents of the United State?, twenty-one years of nge or 
more, hereby earnestly petition your ]ionora)»Ic body to nass a bill forbidding, in the 
nation's mail and military service, and in interstate couiracrce, and in the District of 
Columbia andthe Territories, all Sunday traftic and work, except works of religion and 
works of real necessity and mercy, and aucii private work by tboso who obstirvo an- 
other day as will neither interfere with the geuerai rest aor with public worship. 

S. Mis. 43 2 



18 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

ESTIMATE OF THE PETITIONS FOR A NATIONAL SUNDAY EEST LAW. 

1. Protestants represented in the official membership of the Ameri- 
can Sabbath Union, namelj'^: The combined membersMp of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, the Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Churches, 
North and South, and the Eeformed (Dutch) Church, all of which have 
officially appointed members of the American Sabbath Union, by whom 
the law'^is asked for (practically 6,000,000), 5,977,693; Soman Catholics 
represented by letter of Cardinal Gibbons appended,* 7,200,000 ; total 
13,177,693. 

There are surely enough other petitioners from Protestant denomina- 
tions not represented above and from persons not members of any church 
to make the number of petitioners a round fourteen millions. 

These labor organizations are now even more active than the churches 
in working the petitions. Every mail brings the indorsement of labor 
organizations from all parts of the. land, confirming by local action the 
action of the general assembly of the Knights of Labor and the national 
action of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. 

There are more than a quarter of a million members in the labor organ- 
izations that have petitioned for a Sunday rest law since the former hear- 
ing on April 6. 

Thousands upon thousands of individual signatures, on our half-mile 
double-columned petition, have duplicated the action of the churches and 
labor organizations. We do not of course consider indorsements by vote 
as of equal value with individual signatures, but we believe this petition 
unparalleled in the history of legislation in the number of its individual 
and representative indorsements, and especially in that it represents 
the united action of labor organizations and churches of all creeds. 

The letter of Cardinal Gibbons is as follows : 

Cardinal's Residence, 408 N. Charles street, 

Baltimore, December 4, 1888. 
Rev. Dear Sir : I have to acknowledge your esteemed favor of the 1st instant in 
reference to the proposed passage of a law by Congress " against Sunday work in the 
Government's mail and military service," etc. 

I am most happy to add my name to those of the millions of others who are laudably 
contending against the violation of the Christian Sabbath by unnecessary labor, and 
who are endeavoring to promote its decent and proper observance by legitimate leg- 
islation. As the late Plenary Council of Baltimore has declared, the due observance 
of the Lord's Day contributes immeasurably to the restriction of vice and immorality 
and to the promotion of peace, religion, and social order, and can not fail to draw 
upon the nation the blessing and protection of an overruling Providence. If benevo- 
lence to the beasts of burden directed one day's rest in every week under the old law, 
surely humanity to man ought to dictate the same measure of rest under the new law. 
Your obedient servant in Christ, 

James Card. GtIbbons. 
ArclibisJiop of Baltimore. 
Rev. W. F. Crafts. 

I also present some extracts from a very admirable report of the New 
York Sabbath Committee, just issued, giving many facts bearing on the 
points at issue in the proposed law : 

Carefully distinguishing between private acbs which lie within the domain of every 
man's personal liberty, and such public acts as affect the well being and rights of the 
community, the committee sought to protect the day of worship against disturbance, 
and to secure to all classes, so far as practicable, the enjoyment of the Sunday rest. 



* The letter is not equal in value to the individual signatures of the millions he 
represents, but no loyal Catholic priest, or paper, or person will oppose what has thus 
been indorsed. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 19 

Of one provision of tlie liiw, as nnderstood by tho committee, it lias been impossible 
hitherto to secure tlie impartial enforcement. The statute prohibits "shows" on 
Sunday, by which would seem clearly to be intended public exhibitions of whatever 
sort for money. In more than one case complaints under this provision have been 
dismissed by police justices, on the ground that the exhibitions complained of were 
not immoral in their nature and did not involve public disturbance. Tho statute, 
however, does not prohibit shows as immoral or even as causing disturbances of the 
peace. The prohibition in question is a part of that general enactment, tho object of 
which is to secure to all classes the equal enjoyment of the Sunday rest and a decent 
public respect for the day, by forbidding ail forms of labor and avocations i)ursued 
for the purposes of gain, except in cases of necessity or mercy. 

In one or two instances it has been the duty of the committee to call attention to 
proposed theatrical entertainments on Sunday for charitable purposes. It need 
hardly be said that if the Sunday theater law is enforced at all, it must be impar- 
tially enforced. An exception made in one instance would open the door for other 
exceptions. It is a questionable charity which, oven for a good end, sets the ex- 
ample of violating the laws of the State. 

Attention was called in the last report to the effort made by associations of sales- 
men in retail stores to secure compliance with the law forbidding Sunday trafQc. It 
was found impossible to enforce the prohibition because of the insufficiency of its 
penalty ; the offenders would readily pay the minimum fine of $1 or ^2 usually im- 
posed, for the privilege of continuing their illegal sales. Application Was therefore 
made to the legislature for an amendment to the law. A retail employes' associa- 
tion, with the sanction of the Central Labor Union, presented a bill, which was finally 
passed Juno 6, 1887, making the minimum penalty for the violation of the Sunday 
statutes to be ^5, with an alternative of imprisonment not exceeding 5 days, and on 
second conviction a fine of from §10 to $20 and imprisonment of not less than five 

days. 

» ♦*#*#» 

It is to be hoped that the movement for early Saturday closing will not be abar 
doned. Its universal adoption would in time obviate most of the difficulties attend- 
ing it, as is shown by many years' experience in England. 

The committee also invited the German pastors of New York and Brooklyn to meet 
for consultation, and with their help Pj German meeting was held at Cooper Institute, 
attended by nearly three thousand German Americans, at which able and earnest ad- 
dresses were delivered in German against the principles of the ''Personal Liberty 
Party," and in defense of our American Sunday observance, which were received with 
enthusiastic applause. 

This "Personal Liberty " movement awakened counter agitation throughout the 
State, nnd in almost all of the r^rincipal town meetings were held and sermons 
preached in reference to it. Citizens without distinctiont of party or faith. — Roman 
Catholics, Protestants, and large numbers of Germans — united in the opposition. 
% * * * # » * 

An important feature of the Sunday discussion throughout the country is the larger 
part which workingmen are taking in it. In the movement for bettering the condi- 
tion of the workingmen, which is so pregnant a feature of our times, the value of 
the Sunday, rest and of the laws which protect it is being more distinctly recognized. 
Tho Central Labor Unions of Brooklyn and New York and Knights of Labor in other 
parts of the country have sought the enforcement of existing laws closing shops and 
Btores on Sunday and the enactment of such laws where they do not exist. In Bos- 
ton, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Indianapolis, and other cities the journeyman bar- 
bers have recently agitated for relief from Sunday work ; while, in compliance with 
thi« denianil, in Minnesota, a recent law x>rovide8 ''that keeping open a barber-shop 
on Sunday for the purpose ofitputtiug hair and shaving beards shall not be deemed a 
wotk of necessity or charity." 

# « » « 4f « « 

Tho supremo court of Pennsylvania, in a decision handed down January 3, 1888, 
said : "The weekly day of rest is, from a more physical and political stand-point, of 
infuiitcly greater value than is ordinarily suppo;3e(l, since it not only affords a health- 
ful relaxation to persona in every position of life, but throws a strong barrier in tho 
way of the degradation and oppression of tho laboring classes who of all others need 
this ever-recurring day of rciit and relief from weekly toil. It is therefore neither 
harvsh nor unjust that man should be required to obey these statutes wbich have been 
wisely ordained for the protection of the Sabbath." 

In Ohio an amendment to the previous law was passed by the last legislature, which 
takes away fi'om city councils tho right to regulate the opening and closing of saloons 



20 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

on Sunday, prohibits more effectually the selling of intoxicating and malt liquors O'n 
that day except by physician's prescription, and compels the closing of places of sale. 
It was i>assed by a decided vote of members of both political parties. 

*■ * * * n it It 

Saj^s a leading Chicago paper : "All of the theaters that derive their patronage from 
what, for want of a bettor phrase, may be called the better class of society, would be 
glad to close on Sunday. Not a few saloon-keepers would be glad of a Sunday holi- 
day." (Inter Ocean, February 26, 1888.) 

The law of Missouri prohibits on Sunday liquor selling, theaters, base-ball parks, 
and other places of amusement where an admission fee is charged. 

Societies in England have been at work for many years to secularize the Lord's 
day under guise of providing for the working classes entertainments which the more 
intelligent of them do not desire, but rather dread, as threatening that same invasion 
of their Sunday rest which has deprived continental workingmen of it to a very large 
extent. 

• « • « M * « 

The different states that make up the German Empire differ widely as to the cus- 
tom of Sunday labor. In some states labor knows no day of rest, in others there is 
partial cessation of work on Sunday. Returns from 50,000 manufacturing estab- 
lishments, with 1,582,(300 workingmen, show rather more than half of the establish- 
ments, working on Sunday, but less than half of the employes work regularly on that 
day. 

Of these statistics a leading journal says: "They prove one thing with tolerable 
certainty, and that is, that the footing of Sunday as a day of rest is almost as preca- 
rious in Germany as its footing as a day of religious observance. * * » On one 
other point the friends of Sabbath observance have undoubtedly found themselves 
somewhat justified by experience. They have always maintained that, if Sunday 
were not kept as a sacred day, its retention as a day of rest from toil would prove 
very difficult. In this they are apparently right. In all the continental countries 
along with readiness to be amused on Sunday comes also readiness to work. It seems 
difficult, if not impossible, to enforce a rule which allows people to play lawn tennis, 
or go to the theater, or sit in beer gardens, but forbids them to work in factories or 
Ireep their shops open. The experience of Germany seems to contain a great deal of 
instruction on this point." (The Evening Post, December 10, 1887 ; The Nation, Decem- 
ber 15, 1887.) 

^ In Russia the movement for the weekly rest has made itself felt, and petitions have 
been addressed to the holy synod from different parts of the Empire asking for the 
closing on Sunday of all stores and workshops. It is said to have been favorably re- 
ceived, and that the question will soon receive attention. The movement originates 
not with the clergy, but with employes. 

The great problems that now confront us are social questions ; the equitable distri- 
bution of wealth ; the securing to all classes, so far as possible, the opportunities for 
self-improvement which are supplied by the leisure which wealth affords. In the 
solution of the problem the divinely appointed weekly rest bears a prominent part. 
The Sunday question demands careful study on the part of those who are seeking 
Tght on these problems in theinterestsof their fellow-men, and especially on the part 
of workingmen themselves. 

I also submit another document, which gives the questions asked 
and answers given in the international convention of the Brotherhood 
of Locomotive Engineers and the Knights of Labor, at the close of my 
address. After the half-hour address, an hour and a half was spent in 
the convention of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in questions 
and answers, and half an hour in the Knights of Labor, after which, in 
both cases, our petition was indorsed by a unanimous vote: 

[Extract from rei)ort of Kev. Wilbur F. Oaft's address on tlie Sunday rest. Petition before jreneraJ 
assembly of the Knigbts of Labor. (From Journal of United Labor, November 29, 1888.)] 

At the convention of engineers several questions were raised by those who feared 
that the petitioners' dream of Sunday rest for them might be too good to come true. 
The first question raised was, " Will not one day less work per week mean one-seventh 
less wages 1" In response to this, attention was called to the statement of the Vander- 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 21 

bilt engineers, and also of General Diven and otlier raikoad managers, tliat as much 
railroad work as is now done can be done in six days, and done better, because of 
the better condition of the men ; and on this ground the engineers would be sus- 
tained in demanding and, if necessary, compelling the railroad companies to so read- 
just the pay schedule that the men Avould be paid as much as at present. I agree 
with Mr. Powderly, as I said to them, that there should be no strikes except such as 
were in accordance with knightly princijdes. 

Another question was, " What good would my Sunday off do ray family if I were a 
hundred miles away with my engine ? " It was replied that a railroad man would usu- 
ally reach the same point Saturday night every week, and would locate his home at that 
point. Another question related to the stock train, which, it was said, could not be 
stopped on the Sabbath vv'ithout cruelty to animals. But another engineer replied 
that there were cars now provided in which stock could be fed and watered as if in 
the stable on such trips as were too long to accomplish between Sabbaths. * In any 
case, men should not be sacrificed for cattle. One freight engineer from Georgia, 
where the law against Sunday freights is enforced, said emphatically that he never 
would leave Georgia while a railro'ad job could be had there, so greatly did he prize 
his Sunday rest. 

Now I shall be glad to answer any questions, hoping to clear up all seeming diffl 
culties, so tliat you can all indorse the petition as practical labor reform. 

Question. Wouldn't it be the best v/ay to stop Sunday trains to have the Govern- 
ment own and control the railroads altogether as the knights advocate ? 

Answer. I believe in that. Perhaps the best way to begin the discussion of Gov- 
ernment control for seven days per week is to discuss this bill for Government con- 
trol on one day. If the railroads refuse the little we now ask the people will be the 
more ready to take control altogether. 

Queslion. Could not this weekly rest day be secured without reference to religion 
by having the workmen of an establishment scheduled in regular order for one day of 
rest per week, whichever was most convenient — not all resting on any one day ? 

Answer. A weekly day of rest has never been permanently secured in any land except 
on the basis of religious obligation. Take the religion out and youi take the rest out. 
Greed is so strong that nothing but God and conscience can keep him from capturing 
all the days for toil. However, I believe in a law requiring that some week day be 
given for rest to those engaged in such work as is permitted on Sunday, in accord- 
ance with the following petition which was indorsed by the Knights of Labor Coun- 
cil of Chicago; but being a petition for a State law, I present it, not for indorsement 
by the General Assembly (as I do the other petition), but only for you to carry home 
and push, each in his own State : 

*'To the State senate : 

*'The undersigned earnestly petition your honorable body to pass a bill forbidding 
any one to hire another or to be hired for more than six days of any week, except 
in domestic service and the care of the sick, in order that those whom law or custom 
permits to work on Sunday may be protected in their right to some other weekly rest 
day, and in their right to a week's wages for six days' work." 

Question hy the "peaceful socialist : " Can not this Sunday rest (in which I believe) be 
secured without law, and so without interfering with personal liberty, by agreements 
among churches, among engineers, etc. ? 

Answei'. Sunday laws do not in any way interfere with true liberty, for they do not 
require any man to be religious. A six-day law is no more a violation of liberty than 
an eight-hour law. In shortening the hours of labor it is a great advantage for 
the law to name as the rest day one which is already a rest day to a large number of 
the population on religious grounds. On the continent of Europe the voluntary 
plan has failed so signally that the conventions of socialists even are asking for 
stricter laws against Sunday work. 



REMAEKS BY MRS. J. C. BATEHAM. 

Mr. Crafts. Mrs. J. C. Batebam, of Pair.esville, Ohio, tlie superin- 
tendent of Sabbath observance department of the Woraan'.s Christian 
Temperance Union, representing the organization that has done more 
work on the petitions than any other, will now speak. 

Mrs. Bateham. Honored chairman and Senators, as representing 
our gre at body, I had the honor of presenting to you last winter a pe- 

* See General Divcn'e argument in later part of this hearing. 



22 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

tition from nearly two millions of people, asking that Congress forbid 
needless Government work and interstate commerce on the Christian 
Sabbath. Ton graciously granted us a hearing, and your honored 
chairman afterward introduced a bill into the Senate covering our re- 
quests. 

We have to-day to report that that bill has been specifically indorsed 
by hundreds of thousands, and, including those who, not having seen 
the bill, ask in general terms for a Sunday law, the petitions have grown 
from nearl3^ two to about seven millions. This does not recognize as a 
bona fide indorsement for the Catholic Church the personal signature 
of Cardinal Gibbons. Should you accept that, it would make us four- 
teen millions. 

I do not know how many of these seven millions have sent their in- 
dividual signatures — it is said there are millions. I do know that nearly 
every State and Territory is represented, and that, pasted on red cloth 
and arranged as drapery in the Foundry Church, of this city, for the 
American Sabbath Union now in session there, the petition is over half 
a mile in length, much of it in. double columns; and yet this wonderful 
petition, doubtless by many millions the largest ever presented to this 
or any other Government, is not yet full grown. 

Each day^s mail is bringing thousands more, and the rain is expected 
to last for weeks to come. 

The Illinois Sabbath Association and Eev. W. F. Crafts have during 
the past year aided greatly in this work, having secured a large share 
of the new indorsements which will shortly be presented to this body. 

Allow me to say in behalf of the I^ational Woman^s Christian Tem- 
perance Union and these petitioners, we claim that the present attitude 
of Government with reference to the Sabbath is working a great 
injustice and damage to the people, and we base our claim and our pe- 
tition on these facts : 

(1) Nearly every State has its Sabbath laws, but the National Gov- 
ernment has none, though greatly needed, since the question has be- 
come emphatically a national one, and the very perpetuity or loss of our 
national rest day, the Christian Sabbath, seems to depend on its be- 
ing protected by the Government from the encroachments of organized 
capital and on the re-enforcement of State laws by national. 

(2) It is in gross violation of nearly every State Sabbath law that 
railroads run their Sunday trains, yet these States are powerless to 
prevent it since only Congress can control interstate commerce. 

(3) By the State laws ordinary labor and traffic is forbidden on Sun- 
day, but in defiance thereof the United States Government keeps its 
post-offices open and sells as on other days, and sends its mail to all 
parts of the country, though the example of such cities as London and 
Toronto shows Sunday postal work to be unnecessary, the telegraph 
supplying every necessity. 

(4) In its military service, by the extra drills, and parades, Sunday 
is often made the most laborious day of the week. 

(5) By ignoring its Sabbath obligations and the State Sabbath laws 
it sets an example sure to be generally followed by courts of justice of 
overriding and casting odium on all Sabbath laws. This effect is far 
reaching and disiastrous. 

(G) By its example it encourages each citizen to use the day as best 
suits his personal pleasure without reference to the greatest good of the 
greatest number or the laws designed to guard this. 

(7) It is recreant to the principles of the forefathers who established 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 23 

this as a Christian Government on the rock-bed of the Sabbath as the 
bulwark of all morality. 

{t) It is listening to the demands of the rich and neglecting the cry 
of the poor — the Wling men, women, and even the children, who are 
increasingly compelled to work seven days in the week or forfeit em- 
ployment. 

(9) In thus iaiiing to protect their right to the God-given day of phys- 
ical rest, it depri/es them of the opportunity to become intelligent 
members of society and lessens the chance of their being even moral. 

(10) B^^ educating the people in lawlessness or antecedent disregard 
for law, and failing to protect the day which, more than all other infla- 
ences, tends to create and perpetuate, the highest forms of morality, 
it makes itself responsible for most of the flagrant desecration of the 
Sabbath and for the rapidly lowering tone of pnblic morals that is en- 
dangering the very life of our free Government. 

What is needed to remedy these serious evils and place the Govern- 
ment where it will re-enforce the State laws, liberate the prisoners of 
Sabbathless toil, and lift the whole country to a higher plane of moral- 
ity, seems to be that Congress enact such a law as is contemplated by 
the Sunday rest bill. 

You will like to know what classes of people we have found favorable 
to our petition. 

First, the leaders of thought and educators, so far as approached, 
are almost invariably with us. 

Second. Christian people of all Protestant denominations, except the 
small sect of Seventh-Day Baptists. 

Third. Cardinal Gibbons says no man can be a good Catholic and not 
desire such a law. 

Fourth. Nearly ail wage- workers. We have rarely found a laborer 
willing to forego his rest day for the sake of wages if not afraid of los- 
ing his place. They earnestly desire relief and must have it j such 
relief this bill affords. 

There are twomilUons of laborers engaged in needless Sunday labor to- 
day in free America. A letter just received says " a hundred thousand 
railroad men are watching and hoping for your success." They do not 
dare express this j the ^' bosses" are not willing the petitions should be 
circulated, and, in one case, the railroad men were told to let it alone 
and the bearer never to come there again. Two hundred and forty 
thousand wage-workers are represented on our petitions. 

Fifth. Business men who are not prejudiced because it will foil some 
personal business scheme. 

In short vre believe the great majority of the people will approve such 
law, and among them the ablest, the vrisest, the most patriotic and phi- 
lanthropic of our country, as well as the sufferers from lack of protect- 
ing law. 

Who, then, oppose the bill? Almost exclusively those who make 
money from Sabbath desecration. 

First in influence comes the daily newspaper press. As nearly all 
the large dailies publish a Sunday edition, greatly to the damage of 
public morals, and derive therefrom their greatest income, they are ex- 
pected to throw their whole influenceagainstany law which would pre- 
vent their publishing or circulating such edition. But as one great in- 
tent of the bill is to promote; the morality of the people, we believe the 
outlawing of the Sunday newspaper would be one of its most beneficial 
results. 
Second. Eailroad managers, who only yielded from necessity to any 



24 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

interstate regulations by Congress, will probably oppose farther regu- 
lations, especially if asked in the name of their employes. Even ad- 
mitting, as many of them have, that a law requiring all roads to stop 
would prove a financial blessing to the roads themselves, they would 
still want the day for repairs. 

We beg you in this case to remember that the men to whom we all 
intrust our lives and our property, are not fitted for such responsibility 
unless they have one day in seven to rest and thus tone up their nerv- 
ous systems ; and that men trained to disobey the fourth commandment 
are indirectly trained to disobey any other command of God or law of 
the Commonwealth, and thus property and life are rendered insecure, 
and riots are a natural result. 

Third. Steam-boat companies and others who promote Sunday excur- 
sions and amusements ostensibly for the benefit of the people, really for 
the money to be reaped from them for themselves. We claim that these 
excursions and amusements are not demanded by the people ; that the 
former are a weariness to the flesh, and both are a source of great de- 
moralization and a public disturbance; that recreation should be af- 
forded by a Saturday half-holiday and the people be trained to be law- 
abiding and to respect the Sabbath quiet. 

Fourth. Saloonists and their backers — the brewers and distillers. 
Whatever builds up the morality of the people is against their interests 
and all Sabbath laws are their abhorrence. They desire lawfully or 
unlawfully to sell liquor unlimitedly on that day. The immoral class 
go witli them. 

Fifth. A class of business men who can make more money on that day 
than any other. We do not expect this class to be obstructionists. 

Sixth. A class of foreigners who prefer the Continental Sunday, with 
its work, its amusements, its beer, and x^erhaps its morning mass, to the 
American rest day. They do not yet see that the protection and pros- 
perity for which they came to this country is largely the result of the 
American Sabbath and consequent morality. Thoughtful Americans 
who see this will be slow to allow the exchange. 

Seventh. The Seventh-Day Baptists, a class not large in numbers, 
but who object from conscientious reasons, whereas the majority do so 
from greed. Our Woman's Christian Temperance Union, while recog- 
nizing the necessity for a uniform rest day, requests that in this bill the 
conscientious scruples of this class be respected, in harmony with most 
of our State laws, and suggests the following addition to the bill : 

Sec. 7. Any person that lias Iiabitually and conscientiously refrained from all labor 
on Saturday believing that to be tbe Sabbath, shall on proof thereof be exempt from 
the penalties of this law, provided he lias not on Sunday interfered with the rights of 
others to a day for rest and worship. 

We are aware, honored Senators, that the opposition may be a strong 
one; we have taith, however, that you will correctly estimate the mo- 
tives of those who oppose this bill, and that you will heed the voice of 
these seven millions of the most worthy classes of society, saying 
through their signatures, in tones not be misunderstood or neglected, 
that the people of this mighty nation decline to surrender the richest 
legacy God and their fathers have bequeathed to them, a Sabbath of 
rest. 

We believe you will guard the safety and prosperity of the country 
rather than listen to the selfish clamor of those who would sacrifice the 
public weal for private greed. 

This is no ephemeral spurt of religious enthusiasm, but the expres- 
sion of the deepest convictions and wishes not only of the seven millions 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 25 

we represent, but of the vastly greater number wliom tbey represent. 
This country is stirred from one end to the other on this question, and 
it can never be settled till it is settled r ight, for so God and the people 
will have it. 

EEMAEKS' BY HOH. G. P. LOED. 

Mr. Crafts: The next to speak will be the representative of the or- 
ganization which, next to the Woman^s Christian Temperance Union, 
has done the hardest work in gathering petitions. It has really worked 
as a national society, though named the Illinois State Sabbath Associa- 
tion. It is represented here by its most active worker, Hon. G. P. Lord, 
of Elgin, who will now speak. 

]\lr. LoKD. Mr. Chairman and honorable Senators, as a representative 
of the Sabbath Association of Illinois, I submit the following points in 
support of a national weekly rest law : 

(1) By common law the Christian Sabbath, known on our calendar as 
Sunday, is a legal weekly rest day, and it is the only day which by com- 
mon consent is a weekly rest day. 

We all know that statute laws remain on our statute books until they 
are repealed, whereas common laws, which are based upon common cus- 
tom, have to be constantly re-enacted. 

It is estimated tha^t not more than 3,000,000 of our population work 
on the Sabbath, and most of this number are unwilling workers. 
^ This being true, the balance, or more than 57,000,000 of our popula- 
tion, by abstaining from their regular weekly toil on the Sabbath, are 
constantly re-enacting this law of a weekly rest day. 

Congress, by adjourning its sessions from Saturday until Monday, is 
constantly re-enacting this law. 

The Suprem.e Court of the United States, by adjourning from Satur- 
day until Monday, is constantly re-affirming the law which gives to 
the peofjle a legal weekly rest day. 

(2) The Constitution of the United States guaranties to all men the 
" liberty " to have and to enjoy their legal rights. 

Every man is abridged of his liberty when he is deprived of his legal 
rights. 

The Constitution further guaranties the right to " the pursuit of hap- 
piness." 

No man can be happy while he is conscious of being deprived of his 
rights. 
' We regard property rights as being sacred rights. 

Are there not other rights which are equally sacred? 

Our forefathers, as an expression of their abhorrence of a government 
that would deprive them of their rights, converted Boston harbor into 
a great tea-i)ot, and we justify them for that act. 

By what rule of consistency do we justify them for so doing while we 
approve of the acts of our Government in depriving its employes in the 
postal, military, and naval service of their right to a weekly rest day? 

No plea of convenience by any class can justify the Government in 
depriving its employes in the postal service of their rights. 

Nor should v/e overlook that large class of men in the employ of our 
great corporations. 

If these corporations abridge the rights of their employes, deprive 
them of tlieir right to a weekly rest day, by what law oi* equity can 
those corporations require the Government to protect them in their 
property rights when those rights are endangered by their employes? 



26 SUNDAY REST BILL, 

The equities are against them— ^^ they have sown to the wind,'^ and 
they need not be surprised if they " reap the whirlwind." 

He may feel assured that this labor problem will never be solved so 
long as the laboring class are deprived of any of their rights. 

The great demand of the laboring class is for more rest. 

The Government has heretofore recognized the justice of this demand 
by reducing the number of hours required for a day's work. 

It should now enact a law giving to those in its emplov, or under its 
legal jurisdiction, their legal weekly rest day. 



EEMAEKS BY GEHEEAL A. S. DIVEH. 

Mr. Crafts. The next speaker will be a representative of the Amer- 
ican Sabbath Union, the chairman of its delegation, General A. S. 
Diven, who for thirty years practically controlled the Erie Eailway, 
and will speak on the railroad phase of the subject. 

Mr. DiYEN. Mr. Chairman, I suppose the Sabbath Union made me an 
honorary member because, a year or two since, when one of the New 
York papers invited discussion of Sunday railroad traffic, having had a 
long experience in the management of railroads, and feeling somewhat 
qualified to enter upon the discussion, I submitted two articles, in which 
I took the somewhat radical ground that there was no public necessity 
for Sunday trains, and that the corporations owning the roads would 
not suffer in their economy by abstaining from Sunday traffic. 

I took the ground, first, that the amount of traffic v/ould be the same 
whether i3erformed in six days or seven ; second, that the railroads 
have the capacity to perform all the business in six days that they are 
now doing in seven ; third, that it would not increase the expense of 
operating the roads to lay over on Sunday; fourth, that so far as the 
public is concerned, there is no necessity justifying the running of rail- 
road trains on Sunday on account of freights or passengers or mails. 

Having stated these radical views of mine with regard to transporta- 
tion, I would rather stop right here and hear any objections that may 
be made to these propositions, unless they are admitted. 

The Chairman. How do you explain that as much can be done in 
six days as in seven in the way of railroad traffic ? 

Mr. Diven. I explain it in this way : The railroads have the capac- 
ity. 
, The Chairman. Suppose the work then increases ? 

Mr. Diven. The facilities for transportation increase in advance of 
the demand. 

The Chairman. Would it not be necessary to increase those faciU- 
ties sooner than if you took the seven days to do the work ? 

Mr. Diven. The facilities at present are more than enough to do the 
work in six days, and the facilities are increasing faster than the de- 
mand by the construction of additional competing lines and by improve- 
ment of the older lines. 

The Chairman. You attribute it, then, to the fact that the facilities 
are more rapidly increasing than the traffic ? 

Mr. Diven. That is a fact. 

The Chairman. You do not claim that as much work can be done. 
wlth the facilities remaining the same, in six days as in seven ? 

Mr. Diven. No ; but the roads have facilities for doing enough in six 
days to meet all the business requirements and a great deal more. 

The Chairman. You do not mean to say that a piece of freight could 



SUNDAY BEST BILL. 27 

leave San Francisco and get to Boston as quickly in six days as now in 
seven days ? 

Mr. DiVEN. JSTo. 

The Ohaikman. Then economy of time to the public would be lackiog? 

Mr. DiVEN. I claim that the difference in time between the trans- 
mission of freights from San Francisco to ISTew York would be of no 
practical consequence. It is a kind of freight that, whether it arrives 
one day or the next iu i^I^ew York, it is perfectly Immaterial to the trade. 

The Chairman. How, with business men, or a minister who, start- 
ing from San Francisco on a given day, must preach in E'ew York the 
next Sunday ? Men want to save time. Could they get from San Fran- 
cisco to New York in six days when seven are now required ? 

Mr. DiYEN. There are three days in the week in which passengers can 
start from San Francisco and arrive in Kew York without encroaching 
upon Sunday. 

The Chairman. You do not claim that a passenger could make the 
same distance in six days that he can make now in seven f 

Mr. DiVEN. ]^o ; I do not claim that. 

The Chairman. In other words, you do not claim that by this one 
day's general rest the rapidity of action would be so increased during 
the remaining six days, without destruction to economic principles, that 
the six days' work with the seventh day's rest would be as good as seven 
days' work without any day's rest ? 

Mr. DiYEN. I will state to the committee what I would do if I were 
controlling a railroad line between Xew York and San Francisco. There 
would be the same number of passengers, i^obody claims that it would 
take one from the number of passengers from ocean to ocean, if they all 
had to lay over on Sunday. The same number of passengers would be 
carried. Therefore, the railroads would be losing nothing. 

The Chairman. The main question is. What would be the loss to the 
public ? 

Mr. DiVEN. I will come to that point. If I were managing a road 
from New York to San Francisco, no matter what the other lines might 
do, this would be my programme : Starting Sunday night, there are 
three of the first days of the week in which passengers can go through 
before the next Sunday. Then I would arrange my Sunday stop-over 
stations at three places. I would locate those stations at the most at- 
tractive places upon the road, at which I would make the most perfect 
hotel accommodations. Then on the lay-over trains I would give a 
free ticket for hotel accommodations for one day, and I venture to say 
that any road now in operation which would adopt that system would 
get the largest trains on the lay-over trains. 

The Chairman. Taking the year together, do you believe the public 
would accomplish as much business by observing the Sabbath with ref- 
erence to the transportation of freight and passengers as under the ex- 
isting system by the violation of the Sabbath ? 

Mr. DiVEN. I have no doubt that they would. There is just so much 
traffic to be carried. There is just so much freight. The only case 
where travel would be decreased would be in Sunday excursions and 
matters of tliat kind. 

The Chairman. You were superintendent of the Erie Eailroad '? 

Mr. DiVEN. I was vice-president for a long time of the Erie road and 
I have been president of other lines. 

As to moving ordinary Ireights, which form the great bulk of trans- 
portation furnished to railroads, the product of the forest, of the mine, 
of the factory, and the freight of the merchant, the mine lies idle on 



28 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

Sunday, the factory lies idle on Sunday, and all tlie industries that sup- 
ply transportation to the companies are idle on Sunday. 'No freights 
are brought to depots on Sunday ; no freights are taken from the depots 
on Sunday. J^one of the industries that contribute to the traffic of 
railroads are in operation on Sun da}', and when all those industries are 
suspended, why it is necessary to keep their freight moving I, for the 
]ife of me, can not understand. The bulk of the freights are of a char- 
acter that are not damaged by a day's delay, nor is the market afi'ected. 

It is claimed, I know, that there are certain perishable freights that 
would be interfered with by Sunday rest to the disadvantage of the 
public. As to the live stock that is largely shipped from the valley of 
the Mississippi or from the Western plains, I hold that it is to the ad- 
vantage of the shipper as well as the railroad companies that the stock 
should not be kept in cars more than forty-eight hours. On all the 
trains moving from the sources of the large supply of live stock to New 
York, it is expedient that the stock should be taken out of the cars to 
rest, for if they are forced through without rest they come into the 
market in a feverish, exhausted state, and are unlit for the butcher. I 
know that to be the case from experience. 

When J. was in the management of the Erie road wo thoaght it wise 
to lay over with our stock even between Buhaio and I^Tew York. That 
is not regarded as essential now, but it is essential, nevertheless. The 
stock shipper profits by the time of rest given to his stock. 

However, live-stock transportation is becoming a very small item 
upon the roads. The principal part of the cattle are slaughtered in the 
West, and come to this part of the country in the shape of fresh meat. 

By the invention of the refrigerator car the prepared fresh meats are 
brought from the far West. The cattle are butchered at Kansas City, 
for instance, and the dressed beef is carried not only from Kansas City 
to E^ew York, but to Charleston, Savannah, and Jacksonville, aud all 
over the eastern part of the country. IS'ot only is that done, but it is 
carried to London, and the European cities are supplied with fresh beef 
butchered at Chicago which is as good or better than if it had been 
butchered in Europe. 

With that arrangement by which fresh meat can thus be transported 
witliout deterioration the plea of necessity for moving live-stock on 
Sunday surely ceases. 

Another point urged by a great many is that the milk which supplies 
the cities must be brought in on Sunday. That I know to be unneces- 
sary. The milk of the dairy of Saturday supplies the city of Kew York 
on Monday. No milk trains that supply our cities with milk ever reach 
farther from the market than 100 miles, and thar. hundred miles may be 
run in four or live hours. The milk of Saturday night may be brought 
into New York and dehvered before daylight on Sunday mornmg. I 
would allow these trains to run Sunday night provided they would not 
encroach upon the day of Sunday. 
^ The Chairman. That is, the daylight of Sunday ? 
! Mr. DiYEN. Yes ; the daylight. "^ 

The Chairman. Will you not state to the committee your views as 
to the effect of the seven days' work without a rest day upon the con- 
dition of the employes, and as bearing also upon the safety and efficiency 
with which transportation is made for passengers and freight alike ? 

Mr. DiVEN. That is a subject I am not well prepared to discuss. 

The Chairman. You must have an opinion. 

Mr. DiVEN. Certainly 5 but I am not prepared particularly on that 
point as to facts and figures. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 29 

The ChairmaK". Please state your opinion briefly. 

Mr. DiVEis^, I state most emphaticiilly that the men who have their 
seventh day rest are always in better condition for railroad service than 
those who are compelled to worl^: that extra day. 

The CnAiRMAN. What eiiect has that upon the safety of life 1 

Mr. DiYEN. A wearied engineer, in my judgment, does not keep his 
balance as well; he can not conduct his train with so much prudence 
and safety. 

The Chairman. What is your opinion as to the effect of the present 
method of conducting travel (that is, largely continuing the labor of 
the men on the Sabbath as well as other days) upon the railroad acci- 
dents which occur in the country ? 

Mr. DiVEN. In my judgment a railroad engineer to perform his duty 
with caution ought to have rest. He ought not to be overworked. 

The Chairman. Can you answer the question directly, does Sun- 
day work increase or lessen the accidents in the country ? 

Mr. Diyen. I think it increases them. 

The Chairman. Is there anything else you would like to say ? 

Mr. Crafts. Will General Diven give his opinion as to Sunday mail 
trains ? 

Mr. Diyen. With regard to mail trains, I see no'necessity for the dis- 
tribution or movement of mails on Sunday. The mail is not resorted 
to now in cases of emergency. In all cases of emergency where rapid 
communication is desired, the telegraph is resorted to, and since we 
have that there is no occasion for using the mail in case of emergency. 
Almost all the great business of the country for which the Diaiis are 
used is suspended on Sunday, The exchanges, the banks, all offices of 
business are closed on Sunday, and the Sunday mails are not opened 
until Monday. For personal communication one day's delay in a social 
letter can make no diflerence, and if there is accident, or sickness, or any 
emergency, the telegraph is always resorted to now. 

Senator Palmer. I should like to ask you one question. I heard you 
remark that the adoption of refrigerator cars and their use did away 
with the necessity to transport live cattle on Sunday. 

Mr. Diven. By the use of refrigerator cars fresh meat need not bo 
transported on Sunday. 

Senator Palmer. I thought you were speaking of live cattle in that 
connection, and 1 was going to ask whether you knew that the refrig- 
erator cars are matters of patent and every one using them has to pay 
tribute to tlie owners of the patent. 

Mr. Diven. That may be the case. 

Senator Palmer. Tliat would have a very important bearing on the 
question. 

Mr. Diven. Refrigerator cars arc now used a great deal more than 
formerly. There is ten times the quantity of meat brought to New 
York in those cars than comes on the hoof. 

Senator Palmicr. If the transportation of cattle in the live state 
were abandoned it would give those wlio control the refrigerator cars a 
monopoly of tiie transijorlation of beef. 

Mr. Diven. Tliat is true. 

Senator Palmer. That is a very material practical question that 
would come up in the consideration of any proposed legislation. The 
pnblic are very sensitive on a matter of that kind. 

Mr. Diven. Have not the public, through Congress, a right to limit 
the charges for the transportation of meat notwithstanding the pat- 
ent? 1 think they have. 



30 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

Senator Palmer. Only relatively. I doubt whether Congress has 
any right to make an arbitrary restriction. 

Mr. DiVEN. No ', but they have, I think, a right to put a limit upon 
the transportation charges. 

The Ohaieman. When it is an interstate- commerce question it can be 
regulated. 

Senator Palmer. The Interstate Commerce Commission does not go 
into the rates, I understand, but only into the relation of rates. 

The Chairman. I think Congress has the power to regulate rates, 
but I know gentlemen who think it has not. 



REMAEKS BY EEV. T. P. STEVEHSOK. 

Mr. Crafts. Eev. T. P. Stevenson, D. D., corresponding secretary of 
the National Eeform Association, will now address the committee. 

Mr. Stevenson. Mr. Chairman, the society which I represent is one 
which ]ias been organized to maintain ail existing Christian features 
in the American Government, and to maintain and promote the con- 
nection between the American Government and the Christian religion. 
Consequently this question lies within the field of our work. 

Let me say that the law of God as we seek to have it regarded in our 
country does not simply require the observance of the Sabbath, though 
that is one point of view. ' From another point of view the law of God 
protects the rights of men to the Sabbath. It i^ the boon which God 
has given to the toiling world, this exemption on one day from the curse 
of labor. The yoke of toil on one day is lifted away. The whole con- 
stitution of the world, our social life, and even the material forces and 
substances that we deal with, have been conformed to that law. 

So experience has proven that men do not gain but lose by unremit- 
ting toil, and that more is accomplished, industrially and financially, by 
the observance of that law of rest than is accomplished by continuous 
labor. 

The Constitution of the United States throws its safeguard around 
one eminent personage in our land, exempting him from the necessity 
of labor on that day. The President of the United States has one day 
in seven guarantied to him free from the necessity of considering public 
business under the Constitution of the United States. 

The whole frame- work of our Government has been arranged so as to 
secure exemption from work on that day for nearly all the officials of 
the Government, On two memorable occasions in the year 1828 the 
American Congress was constrained to adjourn on Sabbath morning. 
The vote to adjourn having been twice defeated by the casting vote of 
the presiding officer, Congress was constrained to adjourn by the pro- 
test of members, .who contended that they would not remain there unless 
compelled by force, and that there was no power or law to compel at- 
tention to the public service on the Lord^s day. 

It is a fundamental principle in republican institutions that the rights 
of the humblest are as sacred as the rights of the moat elevated, and the 
same authority — the power of the Government — which guards by irts 
fundamental law the right of the President of the United States to one 
day of rest in seven ought to be exerted to guard the rights of all classes 
of our citizens. The two millions referred to here who are engaged in 
needless secular labor on the Sabbath day, most of them unwilling la- 
borers, constitute an interest which ought to be the care of the Govern- 
ment and of legislation, 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 31 

So we plead this as a question of rights. The American Kepublic 
had its birth in a contest for rights, and the noblest passages of our his- 
tory have been those in which we have been involved in struggles for 
the*^ maintenance and preservation of human rights. 

We present this as a broad question of rights, the right of men, an 
inalienable right under the ordinances and appointments of our Creator, 
to one day ofiest in seven. That amounts to one whole year in every 
seven years, seven whole years in every forty-nine, free for the highest 
uses, tiie highest ends of humanity. 

The CnAiEiMAN. Upon what ground do you base your claim that this 
Sunday rest is an inalienable right, like the right to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness ? 

Mr. Stevenson. On the ground that it is a right given by the Crea- 
tor of men and clearly revealed in His Word to all the children of men, 
just as the right to life and liberty. 

I wish to present one point more. I refer to the recent movement on 
the part of the Government of Belgium. A report presented before the 
Belgian Parliament in the legislative chambers, by the minister for 
railways and the postal service, indicates the reforms towards which 
the Government there is striving. He says: 

In the great railway workshops, where thousands of hands are employed in effect- 
ing repairs, all work has ceased to be done on the Sabbath, save in urgent cases where 
the heads of such departments have to justify their proceedings to the directors. 

I have found, from strict statistical inquiries, that without interfering in the slight- 
est way with commercial requirements, two hundred and fifty goods trains could be 
withdrawn on the Sabbath. 

With regard to the post-ofiSce here in Brussels, we have ten deliveries a day, and 
we compel the postmen to continue this drudgery on the seventh day of the week 
likewise. Are we not bound, on the score of humanity and justice, to allow these 
men a little time for rest of body and quiet of mind ? I propose to arrange matters 
in such a way that all correspondencejshall be delivered in the morning, with two or 
three supplementary distributions during the day in the principal centers, so that no 
interest shall suffer seriously. 

We have, as yet, no general distribution of mail by carriers in any 
American city, and it seems that these timely reforms which the Bel- 
gian minister has proposed we might anticipate in this country by the 
abrogation of the Sunday mail service, the discontinuance of Sunday 
mail trains, and of all kindred violations of the Sabbath. 

The Chairman. Do you claim, from your stand-point, that the entire 
day, from midnight on Saturday until midnight on Sunday, should be 
observed ? 

Mr. Stevenson. We claim that the entire day, one-seventh of the 
time, should be observed. 

The Chairman. You place it on the ground of sacred obligation'? 

Mr. Stevenson. Yes, sir j that the law of God in reference to the 
Sabbath is a law that binds nations and governments as well as indi- 
viduals. We are unable to see how a nation or a government has any 
right to disregard the moral obligation of the Sabbath law. 

Senator Palmer. You state that there is one person in the United 
States to whom is guarantied exemption from labor on the Sabbath, 
namely, the President. Is that guarantied to him by any phraseology 
in the Constitution? 

Mr. Stevenson. Yes, sir; the Constitution provides that the Presi- 
dent shall have "ten days, Sundays excepted," for the consideration of 
any bill presented to him. 

Mr. Call. How about other matters besides bills ? 

Mr. Stevenson. My point is that that establishes the principle, and 
that in consistency the Government of the United States ought to carry 



32 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

out the same principle, as far its authority extends, in behalf of the 
humblest individual in the land. 

The Chairman. Eeallj^, as a matter of argument, because of course 
you advance it seriously, can that be held to be in any sense more than 
a provision that the President is to have ten days, which everybody 
concedes to be days on which it is proper to work'? He may con- 
scienciously be opposed to work upon the Sabbath. Is not that simply 
this, that he shall have ten days when everybody is of opinion that he 
can work, and the seventh day he may work or not as he pleases in the 
consideration of bills? 

Mr. Stevenson. Certainly. That is my understanding. 

The Chairman. It saves his right of conscience as well as other 
people's. 

Mr. Stevenson. I think that is precisely the meaning of the clause. 
It saves his right of conscience in the matter. 

Mr. Call. But how about the President's other duties ? The legisla- 
tive portion is a small part of the Executive duties. What provision of 
the Constitution is there that exempts the President from performing 
any other duties on Sunday ? 

Mr. Stevenson. There is nothing. 

The Chairman. He still might enforce the law in case of necessity 
to preserve public order. The laws are not suspended on the Sabbath. 
Is there any other point you wish to make 1 

Mr, Stevenson. I submit the following document: 

THE NATIONAL MAIL SERVICE AND THE SABBATH. 
By the Rev. T. P. Stevenson. 

The American people are asked to unite in securiDg the discontinnance of the 
national mail service on the first day of the week, commonly called the Lord's Day. 
Certain forms of petition looking to this result will he found below. 

In the present discussion of this question, it is assumed : 

(1) That the law of God requires the observance of one day in seven as a day of 
rest and worship, and that this law is of permanent and universal obligation. 

(2) That the human body and the human mind, as well as the beasts of burden and 
even the inanimate world, are so constituted as to require this weekly period of rest 
or change of occupation. The health and longevity of mankind are promoteLl, and 
the wealth of the community increases faster where the Sabbath is observed. The 
privilege, therefore, of devoting one whole day in seven to the interests of man's spirit- 
ual nature, without material loss and even with material advantage, is one of the 
greatest boons which the Creator has bestowed on our race. The right; to this weekly 
rest is one of the most sacred rights of humanity. Whatever infringes on o/ imperils 
it strikes at the foundations of individual and public welfare. 

(3) Since the weekly Sabbath is at once the great witness for the rights of God, 
and the great opportanity for religious instruction, it follows that morality and re- 
ligion can not long survive among any people its overthrow or abandonment. 

(4) The law of the Sabbath is binding on nations and governments as well as on 
individual men. This obligation has been recognized through our whole history by 
the general cessation of business in our courts and legislatures, and in all other de- 
partments of government on the first day of the week, and by the enactment of laws, 
in every State save one, to restrain and punish the desecration of the Lord's Day. 

(5) TJie transportation and delivery of the public mails on that day can not bo 
justified by any sound plea of necessity, especially in these days when the electric 
telegraph supplies the means of almost instantaneous communication and is ordinarily 
employed for all urgent messages. This was admirably presented once in a memorial 
of Glasgow workingmen, asking for the release of public servants employed in con- 
nection with the postal and telegraph service on the Sabbath: 

"Letters delivered on the Sabbath must have been posted not later than the previ- 
ous day, so that telegrams forwarded on Saturday instead of them would have been 
delivered on the self-same day, and long before sucii letters: and letters posted on Sab- 
bath are not delivered sooner than Monday, so that telegrams transmitted betimes on 
Monday morning instead of them would be received as soon as such letters. And 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 



33 



therefore a total cessation throngliout the entire Sabbath from all postal work would 
not necessitate the transmission or delivery even of telegrams on that sacred day." 

The national mail service on the Sabbath is therefore a violation of the law of God, 
and, although of long-standing, is inconsistent with the established iustilntious and 
best traditions of the^American GoverT?ment. 

This document is addressed to those who are believed to feel and acknowledge the 
force of the forogoiDg considerations. 

EXTENT OF THE EVIL. 

The amount of labor performed on the Sabbath in connection with the mail service 
has greatly increased within the last few years, and is steadily and rapidly' inereas- 
iug. The great railroad lines are extending their connections, absorbing shorter 
roads, extiugnishing local control, and welding them into great ''systems" underdis- 
tant management. Along all these through or trunk lines the mails are regularly 
carried on the Lord's day. The number of towns at vrhich the mail is delivered, and 
the number of hours during which the post-offices are kept open on the Sabbath, are 
being constantly increased, and these post-offices are being increasingly resorted to 
by the public, and even by Christian x^eoiDle, on that day. 

It has been commonly supposed that our great cities were the centers and seats of 
all those iutluences which are most powerfully prejudicial to a right observance of 
the day of rest. But, in the matter of the mail service, the desecration of the Sab- 
bath is spreading far more rapidly in the rural districts than in cities. A very small 
I)roportion of the residents of cities ever go to the post-office. Their letters and papers 
are delivered by carriers at their homes. As there Is no delivery by carriers on the 
Sabbath, there is no reception of mail matter on that day by tiie great majority of 
the citizens. We are well aware how soon and how sadly all this may be changed by 
the establishment of deliveries on the Lord's day in our cities, but the only ettbrts 
put forth in this direction heretofore have been successfully resisted. The extension 
of the mail service, however, on that day to interior towns has been followed there 
by a llood-tide of secular inllaences which are rapidly destroying all sense of the 
sanctity and peculiar obligation of the Lord's day. 

Partial statistics have been gathered a-s to the amount of work done in the princi- 
pal post-offices of the country on the Sabbath. That at Chicago may be cited as an 
example : 





TTcek 
days. 


Sab- 
baths. 




Week 
days. 


Sab- 
baths. 


Lnmp-post box collections 


3 to 7 

2 to .5 

10 

481 


2 
nono 

451 


Mails in . 


75 

79 

154 

14 


26 




24 






50 


Employes working 


General delivery, open hours . . . 


1 







Although, as appears from this table, there is no delivery by carriers in Chicago 
on the Sabbatia, yet the same letter informs us that the three hundred and seventeen 
carriers must go to the post-office on that day to prepare the mails which come in for 
delivery on Monday morning. And we see that of four hundred and eighty-one em- 
ployes, only thirty have the Sabbath to themselves. 

RELATION TO OTHER EVILvS. 



If any one will glance at a complete railroad map of Hie United States and see the 
net-work of railways that lies on the land like the meshes of a spider's web, and will 
think of the endless procession of trains, passenger and freight, moving uiglit and 
day along these arteries of travel and commerce,' and will then remember that this 
syst'Cm, to a largo extent, continues its operations without regard to the Sabbath, ho 
will form some conce])tion of the magnitude of the evil whicli. confronts us. 

The number ofpassenger trains entering and leaving the Broad street station of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad in Philadelphia every Sabbath is al)out oue hundred and forty- 
eight. The numl)er varies from year to year, and atdilferent seasons of Ihe year, but 
the tendency is steadily toward the increase of the business done on the Sabbath. 
This is altogether exclusive of the freight business. The whole business is criminal. 
It is in plain violation of the law of (fod and of the laws of the States, and is, in almost 
every case, without excuse. The law of God is simply ignored. The laws of the 
Common wealth are overridden because the penalties }»r(ivi(b;d a hundred years ago 
are iusuffi<u;nt to restrain the great corporations of to-dav, because the legislitures 

i\ Mis. 13 3 



34 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

refuse to increase tliora, and because tlie officers of the Government and the general 
public are indifferent to the enforcement of the law. But the whole nation is involved 
in the guilt of this vast system of Sabbath desecration through the action of the Gen- 
eral Government in its demand ui^on the railroads for mail service on the Sabbath. 
These facts are closely connected with this other momentous fact, that within five 
or ten years the great newspapers in nearly all our cities have begun the publication 
of regular editions on the Sabbath, and are making strenuous exertions to push them 
into wide circulation. Multitudes are not aware with what energy this assault upon 
the sanctity of the Sabbah is pressed, or at how many points. Some idea may be 
gained by observing what a single great newspaper is doing to extend the circulation 
of its Sunday issue. Many of the principal summer resorts are, like Saratoga and 
Newport, at points somewhat removed from the great arteries of travel, and the local 
roads which reach them do not run on the Sabbath. In order to place the Sunday 
Tribune in advance of all other New York papers in the hands of the multitudes 
thronging the hotels at Saratoga, its proprietors have for two years been running a 
train exclusively for this purpose, from New York to Schenectady, in advance of the 
mail and at a speed, in some places, of 6 miles in five minutes. At Schenectady the 
papers have heretofore been thrown to a pony express which completed the journey to 
Saratoga Springs. This year (1885), the newspaper has secured the service of a special 
engine on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad— hitherto, we believe, a strictly Sabbath- 
keeping road. 

To Newport the Tribune has been carried on the Sabbath by a series of expresses 
in which several men successively took part. A swift horse carried the load in a 
light wagon from Narragansett Ferry to a point on the bay where a yacht was wait- 
ing, with sails raised to receive it. The course from this point to Newport was not a 
clear one. There was an island to cross. The bundles were hurried across in another 
vehicle, and received on the other side by another yacht which conveyed them to 
their destination. Greater speed and an earlier delivery have this year been secured 
by a slightly different route. Narragansett Pier, and Watch Hill, and Hartford, and 
New London, and other points in Connecticut and Rhode Island, Richfield Springs 
and the Catskills in New York, the Delaware Water Gap, Stroudsburgh, and other 
places in Pennsylvania, have been reached by the same paper by similar means. 

From the efforts thus made to reach points to which the mails are not yet available, 
we can readily infer the eager pressure which is exerted on the postal authorities to 
quicken and extend the mail service on the Sabbath for their benefit. Without the 
opportunity afforded by this service to reach a wide circle of readers, the.se Sabbath- 
breaking newspaper enterprises would not have been undertaken. Their very exist- 
ence, with their illimitable infiuence for evil, is chargeable to the mail facilities fur- 
nished by the Government, and they, in turn, react powerfully on the Government to 
stimulate and extend the evil which creates their opportunity. 

The example of the metropolitan journals, in this respect, is being followed by the 
newspapers in cities of the second class, until it is now estimated that there are nearly 
500 newspapers in the United States which are issued seven days in the week. Every 
one of these is dependent, more or less, on the United States mail service for oppor- 
tunity to reach its patrons. Every one of these exerts its influence to enlarge the 
area of that service on the Sabbath. To this whole vast system of Sabbath-breaking 
the national Government, through its mail service, becomes a consenting and con- 
tributing party. The '* Sunday'^ newspapers, the United States mail service, and the 
railroads, constitute a triple unholy alliance against the right observance of the day 
of rest by the American people. The Government, in this matter, throws the weight 
of its august example against the interests of religion and good morals. The Sab- 
bath mail service is even more demoralizing than other forms of Sabbath-breaking, 
because it is the act of the Government itself, while they are illegal— existing in de- 
fiance of law. These facts constitute a veritable crisis in the history of the country, 
and set before the people one of the gravest problems which they have ever been 
called to consider. 

EFFECTS ON MORALS AND RELIGION. 

The sanction of law reconciles many consciences to what would otherwise be 
seen to be great evils. Testimony carefully gathered from various sections of the 
country reveals the fact that the local post-office open on the Sabbath is a sluice-gate 
through whicli a flood of secular reading and correspondence j)ours into even Chris- 
tian homes. O s^er wide sections of the country the arrival of the Sabbath morning 
mail from the city is the signal for the resort of multitudes to the post-offic^ Chris- 
tian men and women, on their way to and from the sanctuary, swell the throng. 
The afternoon of the day is surrendered to secular things. The step to common labor 
on the Sabbath, on some plea of necessity, is not a long one. The rapid multiplica- 
tion of Sabbath-breaking occupations in all our centers of population is a legitimate 
outgrowth of this planting. The three allied forces referred to above are eating 
like a canker into Sabbath-keeping principles and practices even of the professedly 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 35 

Christian public. There is no oth~r point at wliich Sabbath-breaking customs so 
successfully invade the lives and the homes of Christian people, and no other at 
vrhich resistance and protest are mere greatly needed. 

It requires no prophetic gift to foresee the consequences which must flow from tho 
continued operation of these forces. As public sentiment learns to tolerate and to de- 
mand this supply of secular reading on tlie Sabbath, all the instrumentalities of diffus- 
ing it will be enlarged and extended. Tho number of post-ofiices permitted to remain 
closed on the Sabbath will steadily diminish. Tho number of persons who will con- 
sent to receive, or will demand, their mail on the Sabbath, will continually increase. 
The demand for the delivery of letters from house to house in cities on the Sabbatb 
will be renewed and granted. Stores and counting-rooms will gradually bo thrown 
open that tho letters thus delivered may be received and answered. Open for this 
purpose, other business will be transacted. Express companies will be urged to receive 
and forward parcels of goods for which the Sabbath morning mail brings pressing 
orders. Merchants who would prefer to respect the Sabbath will grow restive under 
the seeming advantages gained by conscienceless competitors. 

Christian i^rinciple, weakened by small concessions and undermined by treacherous 
currents on every side, will gradually cease its resistance, save in the bosoms of a few 
who will hold to" the precepts of God's law and the memories of better days ; and the 
Sabbath of the Lord, the Sabbath of our fathers, the Sabbath whose due observance 
is the chief pillar of national virtue and welfare, will be to all appearance lost in a 
rushing tide of lust for pleasure and lust for gain. With the loss of the Sabbath 
religion will perish; for history and tho word of God bear witness that faith in things 
unseen will not long survive v/here the Sabbath, God's chief witness among men, 
has ceased to give its testimony. The natural, almost inevitable, effect of the mainte- 
nance of religious forms and usages while the habitual violation of the moral law is 
tolerated, will be a harvest, first of formalism, and then of unbelief. 

Infidelity and irreligion will sweep over the land ; churches will be neglected ; the 
great evangelistic agencies of to-day, which are leavening our own and other lands 
with the gospel, will be shorn of their strength ; the children of those who throng our 
sanctuaries to-day will become infidels and worldings; our schools and colleges, per- 
verted to secular education, will be seminaries of atheism ; and only as she is scourged 
back to God and to duty by terrible judgments, can it be hoped that the nation will 
recover the advantage which to-day she is so v,^antonly casting away. Even if there 
be small hope of immediate success, efiJ'ort against these on-coming evils will not be lost. 
It will have a valuable elfect on the church and on the public, quickening Christian 
consciences, restraining^ many from falling into the use of the Sabbath mails, and so 
tending to prevent an increase of the evil. 

FOEMEPv ACTION OP CONGKESS. 

A powerful incentive to effort in this bchoJf is found in the action which has form- 
erly been taken by Congress. 

In the years 18*-i8-'29 numerous petitions against the mail service on the Sabbath 
were sent up from no less than twenty-one different States,, These petitions were 
supported by powerful arguments. In one it was reasoned : 

'* During the session of Congress in 1828 (on tho 12th of May and the 8th of July) 
the House was not permitted to proceed with business on Sabbath morning by reason 
of tho steady and firm resistance of a large number of members who refused to rec- 
ognize the propriety of proceeding with their ordinary business on that day. The 
votes for adjourumeni; were nearly equally divided, and more than once lost by the 
casting vote of the chair. Members then declared that they would leave the House 
and not return before Monday morning, unless brought in by force, and very properly 
contended that no authority existed to compel their attendance on the Lord's Day; 
and the House on both occasions was compelled to adjourn. * * * Nov/, since 
those men would not consent to labor a few hours on one or two Sabbaths in a year, 
with what consistency can they compel many thousands of their constituents to labor 
every Sabbath in the year ? 

''Among the amendments to tho Constitution, andequallybinding, is the following — 
Article I. : ' Congress shall make no law respecting au establishment of religion, or 
to prohibit tho free exercise thereof.' Now i)lace beside this the clause : ' And it shall 
be the duty of the postmaster, at all reasonable hours, on every day of the week, to 
deliver on demand any letter, or paper, or packet, to tho person entitled to or author- 
ized to receive the same,' and see whether acon.scieutiousChristian can be a postmaster 
and at the same time enjoy tho free exercise of his religion. If Congress has a right 
to require such labor, can it not require many other things contrary to tho Christian 
religion, as that every member of Congress, of the Executive, and every officer of 
the General Government, shall on every day of tho week attend to tho duties of bis 
appointment, until every Christian shall be excluded from office? But would not 
such lawsx^rohibit the free exeroise of religion, and be unequal and unconstitutional T 



36 SUNDAY REST BILL, 

Would not tbis be as effectual a 'rGligioos test ' as to require a belief iu a particular 
system of religion as a qualiiacation for office ? « '^ * Bnt if the clanso complained 
of be not a violation of that instrument (the Constitution), it is at^ainst the consti- 
tution of heaven. And what people ever prospered legislating against God?'' 

The action of Congress upon these petitions is embodied in a report- prepared by 
Eichard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, and presented in the Senate January 19, 1829. The 
general tenor of this report is to the effect that the American Government can not, 
consistently with its own character, take any cognizance of the law of God as a reason 
for its publioiacts. In that report occur such sentences as these : 

''Your committee look in vain to the national Constitution for a delegation of 
power authorizing Congress to inquire and determine what part of time, or whether 
any part of time, has been set apart by the Almighty for religious exercises. * * * 
The committee might here rest the argument on the ground that the question referred 
to them does not come within the cognizance of Congress. * * * However suit- 
able such inquiries and decisions might be to an ecclesiastical council, they are in- 
compatible with a Republican legislature, which is purely for political and not for re- 
ligious purposes. * * * It is the opinion of tlie committee that the subject sliould 
be regarded simply as a question of expediency, irrespective of its religious bearings. 
In this light it has hitherto been considered. Congress has never legislated on the-sub- 
ject. It rests, as it has ever done, in the legal discretion of the Postmaster-General, 
under the repeated refusals of Congress to discontinue the Sabbath mails." 

The decision then reached remains to-day as the latest decision, and the report 
which recommended it as the latest uttera.nce of the American Congress on the sub- 
ject to which it refers. For fifty- one years it has stood without reply and withoat, 
protest. It is constantly appealed to by the enemies of all Christian features in our 
Government. It gives aid and encouragement continually to those who are laboring 
to break down the safeguards of the day of rest. The struggle with the slave power, 
the war with the rebellion, the reconstruction measures, the temperance conflict, 
have absorbed the attention of the Christian x^ublic to the neglect and exclusion, iu 
large measure, of the whole Sabbath question. Bat many circumstances— none more 
than its vital connection with the temperance reform — are combining now to bring 
it into prominence. Its renewed discussion can not long be postponed. It ought not 
to be postponed for a day. And can any better point be found at which to resume 
the discussion than that" at which it was broken off iifty-five years ago — the national 
mail service and the Sabbath ? Ought that report and that decision to remain any 
longer on the records of the Government, and to operate as they are still operating 
in the minds of the people, without reargument and without protest?" Whatever 
the issue of the present effort, it can not make the situation worse than it is to-day. 
Nothing could be worse than the last recorded decision of the Government, in the 
terms of the above report. 

THE RIGHTS INVOLVED. 

The American people are jealous of interference with individual or public rights. 
They have good reason for this jealousy. This nation had its birth in a contest for 
rights. Our gravest controversies since have been for the vindication of human rights. 
Nations are powers ordained of God for the maintenance of rights, and the nation 
which fails or refuses to maintain these will be thrown aside like a bow which shoots 
deceitfully. What rights are involved in this question ? 

(1) The rights of God, the Creator, the Author of the Sabbath law, are trampled on 
and disregarded by all unnecessary secular labor on that day. This argument is of 
force only to those who believe in the divine obligation of the Sabbath. But these 
constitute, we believe, a majority of the American people. 

(2) The rights of the Christian majority of our population are violated when the 
action of the Government is hostile or injurious to the interests of the Christian re- 
ligion. The church in America has relinquished much of that claim to national favor 
and assistance which in other lands it has been thought well to maintain. But the 
American Government can not set itself in open opposition to Christianity, while the 
majority of the people are Christians, without violence to their most sacred rights. 
The people have the right to demand that the money which they pay to the support 
of the Government shall not be used to overthrow and break down the system of faith 
and morals which they hold most dear. 

(3) The rights of officials and employes of the Post-Office Department are violated 
by the mail service on the Sabbath. The right to one day in seven— and that the day 
fixed by custom, by statute, and by the law of God— for rest and for worship is one 
of the most sacred rights of humanity. It is a right inalienable by any action of the 
individual or of society. No man has the right to sell his labor on the Sabbath. No 
man, no body of men, have the right to hire another man to work on the Sabbath. 
No community, no Government, has the right to establish regulations which inter- 
fere with any man's right to the Sabbath. All such regulations are oppressive, and 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 37 

expose the autliorities wliicli enact tlioui to tlie displeasure of Him who rogardoth tho 
cry of the oppressed. The only exception which can be admitted is '' works of ne- 
cessity and mercy." The claim of the mail service to the cover of this exception has 
already been examiner]. It has been estimated that 150,000 persons in the United 
States are deprived of the whole or a part of every Sabbath, to attend to tho carriage 
and distribntion of tho mails. All these persons are compelled to choose between the 
loss of employment and tho performance of secular labor on the Lord's Day. When 
the Christian people of the United States have considered this subject they will de- 
mand that this system of oppression shall cease. 

THE WHOLE NATION RESPONSIBLE. 

The action of the Government in this matter iuvoh'^s the whole nation in guilt and 
exposes the vvhole people to the righteous judgmeiits of God. No man can say, "I 
never used the mails on the Sabbath ; I am therefore not responsible." When irre- 
ligion and vice unsettle the fouudatiouvS of social welfare, no man can assure himself 
that his personal or domestic interests Avill not be imperiled. When Israel went into 
captivity "that this land might enjoy her Sabbaths," the whole people suffered. A 
nation ia justly held responsible for the action of its Government, because the nation 
is greater than the Governiiicnt, and can reform it at pleasure. The violation of the 
Sabbath by the mail service involves in guilt not merely the officials in charge of the 
Post-Ohlee Department, but the American people. The people have direct, legiti- 
mate, and, in some sense, authoritative access to the Government. Those who desire 
or would insist on the continuance of the Sabbath mail service, in the face of such 
considerations as we have urged, are a small minority of the population. It is only 
necessary for the people to speak ; the Government v^iil obey their voice. 

THE PRESENT EFFORT AGAINST THIS EVIL. 

The National Reform Association which issues this document was organized some 
years ago, among other purposes, " to maintain existing Christian features in the 
American Government, and to promote needed reforms in the action of the Govern- 
ment touching the Sabbath, the institution of the family, the religious element in 
education, the oath," etc. This work, therefore, since it concerns the action of tho 
Government, lies within the proper field of this association. The list of officers ap- 
pended below attests its representative, nnsectarian, and thoroughly national char- 
acter. It seeks, in this effort, to co-operate with and to supplement the labors of 
any other committees or associations which are seeking the same end. Its officers and 
members are deeply sensible of the gravity of the question at issue, and of the earn- 
estness of the controversy which will arise upon it. Bat they believe the hour is ripe 
for the renewed discussion of this subject, and, with God's help, they will not falter 
in the task until the matter shall be settled in accordance with tho law of God. 

They hope, moreover, that this will prove to be but one part of a great work of 
Sabbath reformation, embracing many other practical questions and bearing all for- 
ward to a right and permanent settlement. Every such issue raises the whole ques- 
tion of the obligation and right observance of the day of rest. The discussion of 
one such issue assists the discussion of every other. The neglect of any one retard3 
the consideration and settlement of all. We undertake this special work because it 
lies within our special field, but we feel that in so doing v/e are the helpful allies of 
all who are laboring, in any way, for the preservation of the Sabbath. And we shall 
succeed — not this year, nor next year, nor, perhaps, for many years. But the ultimate 
triumph of the Sabbath cause is among the " sure mercies " which God has promised to 
the church and to the world. And this, with God's blessing, we shall even now do. Wo 
shall lift this question out of general inattention and neglect, and set it on high, 
wheie it shall not again bo lost sight of. We shall quicken Christain consciences, and 
evoke tho testimony of tho charch, and enlist the co-operation of eai-ucst men and 
women. All this will bo positive and immediate gain, and will augment tho forces 
which will ultimately'" determine the action of the Government. 

Other organizations, too, are working for the same result. The form of petition 
which we subjoin was prepared sometime ago by the Internatioual Sabbath Associa- 
tion, with tho approval of tho Post-Offico authorities at Was'hington, and has been 
widely circulate-d. Some excellent documents on the .sui)jcct have been i.ssucil by the 
Kame society. The Woai:)ri\s Christian Temperance Union has created a department 
for tho suppression of Sabbath desecration, and has already begun 1o agitato tho 
di.icoutinuance of the ruail service on tho Sabbath. Ail local Sabbath associations 
ai;d committees will lend their aid. New friends and helpers will l)o found as tho 
«'i.si;us'don goes on. The Naf ional Reform Association simply desires to coutribute its 
share to tlm elfcrts wliich will one day secure this ])ublic and sig:iiiieant standing 
acknowledgmeut, by the American Government, of th« obligation of the Christian 
Babbath. 



38 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

This document will be sent, as fast as means are secured for the purpose, to all 
newspapers, secular and religious ; to all ministers of the gospel ; to all woman's 
Christian temperance unions ; to all Sabbath committees and associationSj and to 
other persons and societies likely to be interested in the movement. 

It will be followed from time to time by other documents, to which similar cur- 
rency will be given. 

Copies of the petition appended below, in suitable form for circulation, will be sent 
to all pastors, and to woman's Christian temperance unions, and will be furnished 
freely to all who will apply to the address of the corresponding secretary given below. 

These petitions, as they are returned to the office of the National Reform Association, 
will be classified by Congressional districts, and placed in the hands of Representa- 
tives and Senators for presentation to Congress. In every case the matter will be 
pressed on the attention of Congressmen in personal interviews. 

Those who favor the proposed measure are requested to write personal letters to 
their Representatives concerning it, and to defend and urge it in the columns of the 
public journals to which they have access. 

All ecclesiastical courts and other religious assemblies, and all conventions in- 
terested in measures of reform are requested to take suitable action and forward 
the same to their Representatives in Congress, and to religious and other journals for 
publication. 

On the strength of the facts and arguments set forth in this document we hope for 
the general and earnest co-operation of Christian citizens. 

PEACTiCAL SUGGESTIONS. 

For the sake of those who labor in our post-offices and in transporting the mails 
it is recommended that Christian men avoid, as far as possible, the mailing of letters 
and other matter as the Sabbath approaches. The following conversation between 
the editor of the Christian Instructor of this city and one of the clerks of the Phila- 
delphia post-office, related in the issue of that journal for July 16, 1885, is sugges- 
tive: 

Clerk. "I have been surprised at religious people ; they are the most exacting peo- 
ple the laboring man has to deal with. Christian journals say that wo ought to 
'remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,' etc., and yet late Saturday night some 
of them will bring large quantities of mail matter to the office and insist that it must 
be sent oif immediately, and they have even come on the Sabbath with mail matter to 
have it sent off. Now, this compels us to work all day Sabbath just as on other days^ 
and we get no rest." 

Editor. " The Instructor makes it a point never to bring mail so that it will have 
to be handled on the Sabbath. If our mail matter is not likely to reach its destina- 
tion before the Sabbath it is retained until Monday, except in the case of long dis- 
tances, where it is not possible to send our mail without its being out over Sabbath." 

Clerk. " Well, that is not so generally. Some of the largest religious publishing 
houses in the city " [here he mentioned several by name] " bring their mail late Sat- 
urday, so that it all has to be handled next.day, and it just keeps us busy all day long. 
This kind of conduct shows a want of sincerity in church members and destroys all 
confidence when preachers and public leaders tell us that we must keep the Sabbath 
day and then compel us to break it." 

The Government will be more ready to discontinue the mail service on the Sabbath 
if the mails are notably lighter on that day than on other days. Large business 
firms and publishing houses, especially, can make their influence felt in this way. 

The Rev. Prof. A. Rittenhouse, of Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, in a note to the 
Christian Statesman, suggests that Christian men, publishers, and business firms have 
their letters stamped with this direction to postmasters, '' This letter is not to be dis- 
patched or delivered on the Sabbath," and adds : 

"I believe that such a notice on envelopes would do good. Every one of them 
would be a silent protest against the Sunday mails, and letter-carriers and others 
who are compelled to handle mail matter on that day would hail them with gratitude." 

The suggestion is judicious and practical. The effect of such a protest could not 
fail to be considerable, and in many quarters which could not otherwise be easily 
reached. There are Christian men who send out hundreds of thousands of letters 
every year, and who, without a farthing of expense to themselves, could in this way 
make every letter "a preacher of righteousness" to the Government and to the 
nation. 

SIMILAR MOVEMENTS ABROAD. 

While these pages are being prepared for the x)ress it is announced in the foreign 
dispatches that the socialists of Germany have been demanding the weekly rest, 
though not on religious grounds, and that the Imperial Government has promised 
to investigate ^'the whole question of Sunday labor." 



SUNDAY EEST BILL. 39 

The Austrian Government, it is also announced, lias issued stringent regulations 
against any common labor on the Sabbath. In consequence of this change there liave 
for some weeks been no newspapers in Vienna on Monday morning. "The regular 
issues appear on the Sabbath, work is then suspended until Monday, and the papers 
re-appear on Tuesday morning. So welcome is the general relief from the oppression 
of uninterrupted toil that there has been no complaint over the omission of the Mon- 
day papers. The publication of the papers, however, on Sabbath'morniug is wholly 
indefensible. The work done on Saturday would provide for Monday's paper as weil 
as for one published on the Sabbath. There is no necessity, as has been deD:'onstrated 
by some of the most successful pa,per3 in the United States — notably the New York 
Journal of Commerce — for a single hour of Sabbath work on a Monday morning 
paper. 

A similar movement in Belgium is set forth in the following extract from a speech 
recently delivered in the legislative chambers by the minister for railways, telegraphs, 
and the postal service. After reviewing the opinion of his predecessor, who had 
thought it unwise to attempt any change, the present minister said : 

"Now, my reforms are these: In the great railway workshops, where thousands of 
hands are employed effecting repairs, all work has ceased to bo done on the Sabbath, 
save in urgent cases, when the heads of such egtahlishments have to justify their pro- 
ceediugs to the directors. The freight offices in the cities and larger towns are closed 
after the mid-day dispatch. I have found, from strict statistical inquiries, that, with- 
out interfering in the slightest way with commercinl requirements, two hundred and 
fifty goods trains could be withdrawn ©a the Sabbath. With regard to the x^asaenger- 
raiiway traffic, no curtailment will at present take place. As yet Belgium is not ripe 
for such a movement. A great reform, it seems to me, would be compromised by 
urging this prematurely. With regard to the post-office here in Brussels we havo 
ten deliveries a day, and we compel the postmen to continue this drudgery on the 
seventh day of the'week likewise. You all ki^ow what an estimable and thoroughly 
duty-going set of men our postmen are. Are we net bound on the score of humanity 
and justice to allow them a little time for rest of body and quiet of mind ? I propose 
to arrange matters in such a way that all correspondence throughout the country, 
without exception, shall be delivered in the morning, and that at the principal cen- 
ters there shall be organized two or throe supplementary distributions during the day, 
BO that no interest shall suffer seriously." 

The attentive reader will see at once how far more favorable are the state of pub- 
lic opinion and the habits of the people in the United States than in Belgium and 
other European countries to the inauguration of such a reform as we propsse. There 
the minister apologizes for and defends the reduction of deliveries by carriers on 
the Sabbath from 10 to 3 or 4. Here we have, as yet, no delivery by carrier in any 
of our cities. All the reforms he so timidly proposes, if successfully carried out, 
would not bring Belgium up to the point even now occupied by the American people. 
No considerations of expediency forbid us to take the true and consistent ground. 
Public sentiment here is not so far corrupted as to make it unwise to propose the 
entire discontinuance of the mails and of railroad traffic on the Lord's Day. Unless, 
however, an arrest can be placed on the growing desecraiion of the Sabbath by the 
postal service, we shall gradually conform ourselves to the European standard. We 
shall make progress in one direction or in the other. We shall either regain what 
we have lost, or we shall continue to lose. While Europe is thus struggling pain- 
fully to recover her lost Sabbath, let us lead the way in kiudred efforts, and, with 
God's blessing, in substantial victories here. 



REMAEKS BY EEV. E. W. COHEAD, B. D. 

Mr. Crafts. The next representative will be Rev. ¥. W. Conrad, 
D. D., of Philadelphia, editor of the Lutheran Observer, who will speak 
in behalf of those Germans who love the Sabbath. 

Mr. Conrad. Mr. Chairman and j^^entlemeu of the committee: As 
has been said, I am to speak concerning the views and positions of the 
Germans in this country, most of whom are Lutherans, on this Sabbath 
question. 

The Germans, as you know, are a constitutionally religious people, 
chosen b}^ Providence to be the agents to introduce Protestantism ; but 
they have deteriorated, as other nations have done. 

Taking the tide of emigration that bas been flowing over here for 
more than two hundred years, from the time when the Swedes arrived 



40 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

on the banks of the Pelaware before Penn, and the Germans soon after- 
wards, the emigration has deteriorated. The Germans, who for tbe last 
five or ten years, or probably more,have been emigraticg to this coiiutry, 
who are free-thinkers in their belief and socialists in their political 
views, we are told by those who understand the matter are a lower 
grade of German emigration, and they have at last thought themselves 
so strong and formidable that they have organized associations all over 
tbe country termed personal liberty leagues, one of the essential purposes 
of which is to overthrow the laws that protect the Lord's Bay, the Sun- 
day, the Christian Sabbath. Those associations have become somewhat 
formidable, and, having thrown themselves into the political arena, 
they have become a factor in American politics as well as in the religious 
development in America. 

I desire to speak for the evangelical portion of the Geiman emigration 
who are Lutherans and also Keformed Evangelical Christians, as we call 
them. In regard to their position on the Sabbatb, while they differ 
relatively as to the basis on which the Christian Sabbath now rests, and 
also in regard to the manner of observing the Sabbath, they are, I should 
say, universally in favor of maintaining the Sabbath laws that exist in 
America. 

To show how the elevated Christian Germans and Lutherans feel on 
the subject, I will state that when this personal liberty movement began 
in Philadelphia, where there are so many Germans, and where, I think, 
it was born. Dr. William J. Mann, for twenty-five years the pastor of 
the largest German church in Philadelphia, now professor in the Phil- 
adelphia Theological Seminary, one of the strongest seminaries in this 
country, felt himself called upon to write a plea against tbis personal 
liberty movement, in which he pointed out the wrong these Gernaans 
were doing and the propriety of the establishment of the Sabbath. He 
also vindicated the establishment of the Sabbath and pointed out to 
them the impropriety and wrong tor them, as emigrants to this country, 
to endeavor to uproot these institutions and to control the country in 
that respect. The Philadclpbia Sabbath Association has published that 
as a tra/jt, and gent out 20,000 copies of it; is distributing it now, and 
Dr. Mann fjut his own name to it, to receive the opposition of his own 
countrymen, if tbey saw proper to pour it upon his head. 

In regard to the significance of the German Lutheran development 
in this country, I desire to say that it is becoming more and more sig- 
nificant both in our religious and ijolitlcal life in America. Professor 
Marsh said thirty years ago that one-half of the American nation was 
of Teutonic origin already, and that the Germans bad carried into their 
language all the learning of the world. The emigration that is now 
coming to tbis country adds to the Lutherans more than 100,000 a year, 
so that the Lutheran is now the third denomination in the land ; and as 
they have tbe half of Protestantism to draw irom, our Methodist and 
Baptist brethren v^all have to go on double quick if these German 
Lutherans do not overtake them by and by and become the strongest 
denomination in this country. 

So we desire to testify for this great nationality that constitutes such 
a large mass of the American cliurcli and of the American state that 
on this question those who are evangelical and have not departed from 
the faith of their fathers, from the positions of Lather and Melanctbon, 
and the Confession of Augsbury on the Sabbatb, stand for the Sabbath 
law and will maintain it with their American countrymen. [Applause.] 



SUNDAY BEST BILL. 41 



EEMAEKS BY REV. A. H. LEWIS, D. D. 

Mr. Crafts. We shall uow grant to an oppoBent of the bill, a repro- 
sentative of the Seventh-Day Baptists, Kev. A. H. Lewis^ I>. 13.^ the 
time which he asks. 

Mr. Lewis. Mr. Ghairmaii and honorable Senators : I appear„ under 
the instruction of the American Sabbath Tract Society, before this 
committee as a representative of the Seventh-Day Baptists iis the 
United States. What I am about to ask intimately concerns a large 
number of people other than the Seventh-Day Baptists, .such iis Sev- 
enth-Day Adventists and Jews, though I am not commissioned to speak 
for them at this time. 

We respectfully ask that the bill now under consideration be added 
to, as follows : 

Sec. 7. Persons who observe the seventh day of the week as the Sahbath shall bo 
protected in such observance equally with those who observe Sunday; they shall 
also be exenl1^t from the provisions of this bill relative to ** secular work, labor, or 
business," both as to the performance of the same and compensation therefor. 

We ask such protection and exemption on the broad ground of con- 
scientious and constitutional rights in matters of religion, not as a con- 
cession to a minority. We observe the Sabbath rather than the Sunday 
from a deep religious conviction that we can not obey the divine law 
in any other way. For more than two hundred years, in the United 
States, the Seventh Day Baptists have submitted to the unavoidable 
difficulties which at best are associated with their religious convictions. 
This fact forbids question as to the character of these convictions. It 
is also one reason why we appear here to ask equality before the law. 

When, from conscience toward God, we obey one part of the fourth 
commandment, by keeping the seventh day, it is manifestly unjust for 
the Commonwealth to require us to disobey another part of the divine 
law, which requires men to work six days. Such a requirement com- 
pels them to violate conscience, or lose one-sixth of their time for secu- 
lar duties. 

That is now the case in several of the States. The business men of 
the church of which I am pastor in the city of Plainfield, N. J., con- 
duct very little business except on five days in the week. Most of them 
are doin^ business either in the city of New York or in the city of Plain- 
field. AVe submit to this as one of the iuconveniencies of our belief, 
and only ask thac the law, especially the national law, shall not make 
the inconvenience greater. 

Such compulsion contravenes the fundamental principles of religious 
liberty. Hence we ask freedom, ancl protection in the exercise of those 
inalienable rights which exist in the nature of God^s government and 
of this Kepublic. These rights, belong to men as individuals, not as a 
mass ; to minorities? as well as majorities. Human legislation does not 
create them. It is bound to respeiit them. 

What we a^k should be granted tiie more readily since the state Of 
things which this bill seeks to remedy does not and can not arise from 
the exercise of these rights by tiiose who observe tlie Sabbath instead 
of the Sujiday. Sunday mails, Sunday newspapers, Sunday commerce, 
Sunday excursions, and Sunday games abound because tljose who claim 
some sort of regard for Sunday institute and carry forward these things. 
If Sunday, now so sorely wounded, is finally slain, it will be at the 
hands of its friends, and not of those who, having kept the Sabbath, 
seek to use Sunday for legitimate secular affairs. 



42 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

In several instances under State laws which grant no exemption such 
as we here ask, Sabbath keepers have suflered fines and imprisonment 
for pursuing agricultural and other quiet pursuits on Sunday. Our 
plea at this time is urged lest the national sanction be placed on such 
injustice. When this bill becomes law we ask nothing which can be 
construed as favoring unwholesome and obnoxious business on Sunday. 
On the contrary we join heartily in all Sunday legislation against saloons 
and saloonism, and beg to suggest in passing that little can be hoped 
for in legislation against the saloon on Sunday, its harvest day, becaus-e 
the masses are at leisure, when it is permitted fall freedom on all other 
days. 

The GiiAiSMATs. Would you be willing to see yourselves or the public 
restrained on the Sabbath with reference to anything in which the law 
does not already restrain everybody upon week days 1 For instance, 
take the case of the saloon of which you speak. You are willing to see 
it restrained on the Sabbath. 

Mr, Lev/is. Most assuredly. 

The Chairman. You are equally willing to see it restrained upon all 
other days ? 

Mr. Lewis. Most assuredly. We join heartily in all such legislation. 
We only ask that the i)rivilege to pursue legitimate business which is 
permitted to other people upon the seventh day shall be permitted to 
us on the first day. 

The Ohaikmat^. Any legitimate business pursued by other people on 
the six secular days you wish to be allowed to pursue on the seventh? 

Mr. Lewis. Yes, on the first. 

The Chairman. On the first, I meant to say. 

Mr. Lewis. We further ask to be permitted to observe the seventh 
day as a day of religious worship. • ' 

The Chairman. You claim that to you business is legitimate on the 
first day which to other people is legitimate on the remaining six days ? 

Mr. Lewis. We do. I use the term legitimate in the sense of a busi- 
ness that is wholly in keeping with the best interests of good order; 
like agriculture. 

The Chairman. You claim then, that if a railroad train should fall 
into the hands of Seventh-Day Bai^tists they could run it upon the 
Sabbath without restraint ? 

Mr. Lewis. /They could run. it without restraint unless it was shown 
to be to the disadvantage of the Commonwealth, in which case they 
should be restrained as others who infringe upon the interests of the 
Commonwealth. 

The Chairman. In other words, if it was deemed by the majority to 
be for the.interest of the Commonwealth to observe the first clay as a 
day of rest, you would think it would infringe in no vray upon the right 
of a Seventh-Day Baptist that he should be restrained from doing le- 
gitimate work to the same degree that other people are'*^ 

Mr. Lewis. We should not ask for any exemption which other peo- 
ple do not ask, unless the absence of that exemption deprived us of 
such legitimate work as is the privilege of each man to pursue for his 
livelihood. 

The Chairman. If it were the opinion of the majority of the com- 
muoity that to run a railroad train by Seventh-Day Baptists disturbed 
others upon Sunday, do you think they would have a right to do so be- 
cause they had observed some other day*? 

Mr. Lev/is. So far as the mere matter of disturbance is concerned we 
should feel that that was not a standard sufficiently defined nor high 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 43 

enougli to justify legislation upon a question of tliis kind — prohibiting 
our ri gilts ; but if the pursuing of railroad business upon the first day 
of the week by Seventh-Day Baptists, or any others, were shown to be 
necessarily inimical to the best interests of the commonwealth, we would 
agree that it should be restrained. 

We further ask that such phrases as "and to promote its observ- 
ance as a day of religious worship," in the title of the bill, aud the 
similar expression, " Secure * * * the religious observance of the 
Sabbath day," in section G, be stricken out. T^aw should protect relig 
ious services and religious observances on all days alike. It contra- 
venes religions liberty and the (Joustitution of our Kepublic when it at- 
tem])ts to go beyond this. 

We further suggest for the consideration of the honorable Senators 
that the present state of things concerning Sunday observance has not 
come about for want of Sunday laws. Beginning with the early colo- 
nies, most rigorous Sunday laws were enacted and enforced. These 
have been modified, and have remained unenforced because of changes 
which have taken place in the public opinion of the land. This change 
in public opinion has been as strongly marked in religious circles as else- 
where. Primarily and fundamentally the question of Sabbath observ- 
ance is a religious one. The results which this bill seeks to attain can 
be reached only through the channels of religious, moral, and economic 
reform. 

I submit to the committee, as bearing directly upon the subject under 
consideration, the preface to "A Critical History of Sunday Legislation 
froD^ 321 to 1888 A. D.^ " a work from my pen : 

This book euters a field not hitherto occupied in the literature of the Sunday ques- 
tion. Sunday legislation is more than fifteen centuries old, but the general reader 
has not hitherto been able to know accurately either its extent or its specific char- 
acter. The following pages answer many questions which are pressing to the front. 
Existing Sunday laws are much disregarded, and many contradictory theories are 
put forth relative to them. Much that is said concerning them is superficial and im- 
pertinent, because men do not understand their origin or their history. 

The surpassing value of the "historic argument'" is slowly gaining recognition. 
History is an organic whole, a series of reciprocal causes and effects. No period can 
be separated from that which has gone before nor be kept distinct from that which 
follows. Herein lies the A'alne of facts lik those which compose this volume. Every 
efi"ort to remodel existing Sunday legislation or to forecast its future must be made 
in the light of the past. It is nol the province of this volume to pursue an argument 
relative to Sunday legislation, but rather to present those facts on which intelligent 
conclusions must be based. 

The first Sunday legislation was the product of that pagan concex>tiou so fully 
developed by the Romans, which made religion a department of tlie state. This was 
diametrically opposed to the genius of New Testament Christianity. It did not find 
favor in the church until Christianity had been deeply corrupted through the influ- 
ence of gnosticism and kindred pagan errors. The Emperor Constantino, while still 
a heathen — if indeed he was ever otherwise — issued the first Sundaj'' edict by virtue 
of his power as pontifcx maximus in all matters of religion, especially in the ap- 
pointment of sacred days. This law was pagan in every particular. 

Sunday legislation between the time of Constantine and the fall of the empire was 
a combination of the pagan. Christian, and Jewish cults. Many other holidays— 
mostly pagan festivals baptized with new names and slightly modified — were asso- 
ciated in tlie same Jaws with the Sunday. 

During the Middle Ages Sunday legislation took on a more Judaistic type, under 
the plea of analogy, whereby civil an tliori ties claimed the right to legislate in religious 
matters, after the manner of the Jewish theocracy. 

TJie Continental reformation made little change in the civil legislation concerning 
Sunday. The English reformation introduced a new theory and (Icvcloped a distinct 
typo of legislation. . Here we meet, for the first tini<', the doctrine of the trnnsAu" of 
the fourth conmiandment to the first day of the week, and the consc(pu'iit legislation 
growing out of that theory. The reader .will find the laws of that jicriod to bo ex- 
tended theological treatises as well as civil enactments. The Sunday la'.v.s of the 
United States are the direct outgrowth of the Puritan legislation, notably of the Crom- 



44 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

welliaii period. These have "been much modified since the colonial times, and the 
latest tendency, in the few cases Avhich come to direct trial nnder these laws, is to 
net forth laws of a wholly different character through the decisions of the courts. 

In the Sunday legislation of the Roman Empire the religious element was subordi- 
nate to the civil. In the Middle Ages, under Cromwell, and duriDg our colonial period, 
the church was practically supreme. Some now claim that Sunday legislation is 
not based on religious grounds. This claim is contradicted by the facts of all the 
centuries. Every Sunday law sprung from a religious fjentiment. Under the pagan 
conception the day was to be '' venerated" as a religious duty owed to the god of 
the sun. As the resurrection-festival idea was gradually combined with the pagan 
conception, religious regard for the day was also demanded in honor of Christ's res- 
urrection. In the middle-age period sacredness was claimed for Sunday because 
the Sabbath had been sacred under the legislation of the Jewish theocracy. 

Sunday was held supremely sacred bj'^ the Puritans, under the plea that obligations 
imposed by the fourth commandment were transferred to it. There is no meaning 
in the statutes prohibiting " worldly labor," and permitting '' works of necessity and 
mercy," except from the religious stand-point. There can be no '' worldly business" 
if it be not in contrast with religious obligation. Every prohibition which appears 
in Sunday legislation is based upon the idea that it is wrong to do on Sunday the 
things prohibited. Whatever theories men may invent for the observance of Sunday 
on non-religious grounds, and whatever value s>ny of these may have from a scien- 
tific stolid point, we do not here discuss ; but the fact remains that such considera- 
tions have never been made the basis of legislation. To say that the present Sunday 
laws do not deal with the day as a religious institution is to deny every fact in the 
history of such legislation. The claim is a shallow subterfuge. 

Let the reader note that specific legislation against the liquor traffic and its evils 
upon Sunday does not come under this head. Such legislation is no more pertinent 
to Sunday than to any other day, except that as a day of leisure Sunday offers greater 
opportunity for rioting and criminality. Thisis reason enough for the most stringent 
legislation against the liquor traffic on that day. 

The writer is not unaware that the just and unavoidable conclusions to which the 
following facts compel will overthrow many pleasant theories and destroy some 
cherished hopes connected with Sunday legislation. Some minds will deem it sacri- 
ligious to oppose these facts of history to revered notions so long untouched. Such 
considerations are of little weight when one remembers 'Hhat no question is settled 
until it is rightly settled." Facts are stubborn because they are eternal ; and the 
theory which attempts to ignore them insures its early destruction. 



EEMAEKS BY EEV. GEOEGE ELLIOTT. 

Mr. Crafts. Rev. George Elliott, pastor of tlie Foundry Methodist 
Episcopal Church, of this city, and author of '' The Abiding Sabbath," 
will now speak. 

Mr. Elliott. Mr. Chairman and Senators : I wish to say siDiply a 
few words with reference to the very fair statement of Dr. Lewis, mainly 
to call your attention to the fact that he admits this subject is one solely 
of legislative discretion. The question of religious belief, the theo- 
logical questions which interest those of us who suppose that we are 
experts, are questions that we would be hai)py to instruct you in on the 
Lord's day and on other .proper occasions, but we can bring here only 
such arguments as address ' themselves to the legislative reason. If it 
shall seem to be within the range of right and justice that you enact as 
a national law the observance of a day of rest and you look about to 
select that day of the week which will best accommodate all citizens, 
I have no fears as to what day you will select. 

Of the Seventh-Day Baptists, so ablj'- represented by Dr. Lewis, and 
the Jews, who I do not understand are asking arsy thing of this com- 
mittee either for or against the bill, there were at the last census but 
two-sevenths of 1 per cent, of the entire population. The larger por- 
tion of our Jewish fellow- citizens are not at all actively inimical to Sun- 
day laws. I observe that a great portion of them fmd it very easy to 
reconcile Saturday selling with their consciences. 



SUNDAY BEST BILL. 45 

It must be remembered that the bill before the committee np])Ucs to 
the territory under the direct jurisdiction of Congress. In tliat terri- 
tory the proportion of seventh-day observers will disapi)ear to an al- 
most invisible fraction. Most ol them live in small communities in the 
several States. 

So the question which you have to consider, it seeois to me, is sim- 
ply the general interests of the commonwealth. Whether you shall 
deem it wise to make jiny form of exception with regard to persons who 
conscientiously believe Saturday to be a holy day is a question for you 
to decide. But I must insist that the exception to which Dr. Lewis 
objects, that they shall not in such service or work disturb others, is 
one which is essential to the very existence of such a day and such a 
law as we ask at your hands. Your petitioners are oidy askiug that 
the National Government within its jurisdiction give similar legal pro- 
tection to the Sunday that is already given by nearly all the States. 
That ought not to be considered a large or unreasonable demand. 

It has already been remarked that Sunday legislation is in some sort 
a part of the common law of the Anglo Saxon peoples. It antedates 
what is known as statute law by great distances. It is in the old con- 
stitutions or judicial codes which are back of the time of Edward the 
Confessor. The code of Alfred . the Great begins with the Ten Com- 
mandments, and repeatedly enacts penalties for violating the first day 
of the week, or the Lord^s Day. In the codes of Athelstan and Edgar 
the Peaceable, and away back even in the old days of the Saxons, when 
England was divided between West Saxon and Kent, there were Sun- 
day laws. It is a part of the very constitution of all the English-speak- 
ing peoples, a part of their laws and immemorial custom. Sunday is a 
non-legal day, as has already been observed, by the recognition of even 
the Constitution of the United States. The President is not compelled 
by law to do any work on Sunday. He is given ten fall days for the 
consideration of all bills. As to his executive business, I do not know 
that you have any way to compel him to perform it, unless he should 
neglect his duties on any day. He disposes of his own time ; but in the 
only work that you can require at his hands you give him the day of 
rest. We only ask you to gixQ it to all other workers as well. 

It has been remarked by Dr. Lewis that there is no want of Sunday 
legislation. There is, indeed, no want of State legislation on the sub- 
ject, except in some remote localities. Perhaps we would desire some 
amendments and improvementsUn the laws of many States, but there 
is an almost entire want of national legislation. The President of the 
United States has called your attention, in his recent message, to the 
recommendations of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 
and the fact that the confused state of the Sunday laws in this very 
community, in which many of us live, require some action by Congress. 
I have hardly dared to speak it imblicly, for fear that advantage might 
be taken of it by saloon men and others, but it is very uncertain whether 
we have any Sunday laws whatever, in this District, which can be re- 
lied upon to stand the test of judicial analysis. 

There is want of legislation on the subject. The only natiomal leg- 
islation that I know of with regard to the Sunday question is il«e single 
clause in the Constitution already mentioned, and I think provisions 
that at the naval and military schools there shall be no requircinents 
of instruction on Sunday. Jf I am not mistaken that is the range of 
national legislation, and answers fully the argument that there is no 
want of legislation. 

As to the religious questions involved, I presume that we ask for this 



46 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

legislation mainly, as far as your discretion is concerned, as an eco- 
nomic measure in the interest of workingman, and as a religious meas- 
ure only as it protects the Christian commonwealth in its right of 
undisturbed worship and as it defends the rights of conscience. When 
you require Sunday work of public servants you incapacitate for filliug 
public office those whom you ought most to desire to fill those offices. 
If I may be warranted in the suggestion, if the growing distrust of the 
Sunday-school man in places of trust, as cashier of a bank and other 
responsible positions, is significant of anythiug, it is that the S^mday- 
school man of to-day is not the Sunday-school man of Puritan times. 

The church of to-day is weakeoed; the power of conscience in the 
church and community is weakened ; that power of moral conviction 
and high principle upon which public morals depends is weakened by 
the trifling with its conscience at the hands of the state and nation. 

Therefore, as a matter of tree conscience, as a matter of our rights as 
citizens to hold office freely and fully, to render all public service in 
every way without interference or hindrance by law, we ask for such 
legislation at your hands. 

At any time w^hen you desire instruction on theological questions 
such as I)r. Lewis has referred to, of course we shall be happy to give 
you all the information which we possess. 

The Ohaiuman. Dr. Lewis, it seems to me, was quite right in saying 
what he thought fit to say, as it bears upon the protection of the rights 
of conscience in this proposed legislatioo. 

Mr. Elliott. Certainly I do not question the general relevancy of 
his remarks. 

The Chairman. I suppose that he speaks from the stand -point of 
his religious convictions, and to guard against the enactment of any- 
thing that might violate those rights of conscience. 

Mr. Elliott. I insist that you shall give all weight to what he has 
said. For my part (and in this I speak only for myself), if you find that 
without injuring or weakening the legislation you can make a proper 
exception in behalf of these people which would guard all rights, I for 
one would not be found opposing it. I fear greatly, however, that you 
will not be able to properlj^ frame such an exception. 

Senator Call. I did not quite understand what you meant by your 
suggestion that the state is trifling with the conscience of the church. 
In what way f To what legislation do you refer ? 

Mr. Elliott. You require Sunday work of your public servants, for 
example, in the Post-Oftice Department. 

Senator Call. Suppose you find in the Post-Office Department that 
an embezzlement and a theft is being committed, what would you do 
in regard to that ? 

Mr. Elliott. I would punish it, of course. 

Senator Call. Would you allow the man to be arrested on Sunday? 

Mr. Elliott. Certainly; Sunday is a non legal day with regard to 
civil process only. 

Senator Call. What law is it, either State or national, that requires 
work against a man's conscience on Sunday? 

Mr. Elliott. Post-office clerks are required to work on Sunday. At 
the former hearing I called your attention to the fact that the present 
laws with regard to the postal service give too much discretion to local 
postmasters with regard to the requirements, the opening of the office, 
etc., on the Lord's day. 

Senator Call. The law requires certain work to be performed on 
Sunday, but it does not compel any man to do it who is conscientiously 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 47 

opposed to working ou that day. You say tlio state is trifling with 
the conscience of the church. How does it do so ! 

Mr. Elliott. You make it difficult for men to hold ofiice. Of course 
you do not compel a man to work ou Sunday ; he can resign his cilice. 

Senator Call. Suppose the law authorized a man to use as a substi- 
tute some one whose conscience would not be trilled with by v^ork on 
that day ? 

Mr. Elliott. I do not care to go into fine questions of casuistry. 

Senator Gall. But you said the state was trilling with the conscience 
of the church. While we might admit everything else you say, I should 
like to know specifically in what respect the legislation of any State does 
not respect, not only in terms but in fact, the conscience of the church. 
Our constitutional provision is that Congress shall make no law respect- 
ing the establishment of religion. That is to protect each man's con- 
science. 

Mr. Elliott. Certainly. 

Senator Call. We say, who believe in the church, that it protects the 
conscience of the church. So it does ; but it protects the conscience of 
everybody else. 

Mr. Elliott. That is true. Without doubt the existing system of 
Sunday work is in violation of the spirit of our laws. 

Senator Call. That is what it was intended to do, at least. I only 
wanted to know in what way the state is trifling with the conscience of 
the church. 

Mr. Elliott. It is evident, whatever may be the nice point of cas- 
uistry, that a man who has conscientious objections against Sunday 
work is placed at a great disadvantage. 

Senator Call. Suppose he could get somebody else to do the work 
who did not have conscientious scrui>les '? 

Mr. Elliott. The fact that he is compelled to put somebody else in 
his place would put him at a disadvantage. And a man of very delicate 
conscience would believe that what a man does by another he does by 
himself. 

Senator Call. How are you to avoid it ? 

Senator Wilson. I suppose the man would have to resign ? 

Senator Call. Xot at all. He could cease work for a few hours ; and 
that would not hurt his conscience very much. 

Mr. Elliott. Every letter-carrier in all our large cities is required 
to report at the post-office on Sunday. 

Senator Call. Suppose you have a provision which says that every 
man who has a conscientious conviction that he ought not to deliver a 
letter on Sunday shall be excused from that work and be authorized to 
put a temporary substitute in his place at the cost of that particular 
service only, vrould not that save his conscience? 

Mr. Elliott. It might possibly save a part of the cases, but the 
question of individual conscience does not exhaust our argument for 
the bill. 

Mr. Call. But it exhausts the argument as to the state trifling with 
the conscience of the church, does it not? 

Mr. Elliott. I do not think it docs. 

Senator Wilson. Would not that practice still maintain the Sunday 
mail service ? 

JNlr. Elliott. It would still maintain the Sunday service. 

Senator Call. But Mr. Elliott was speaking of the effect on the in- 
dividual. As to the question of religious obli,gation, we might agret> 
about that. 



48 SUNDAY BEST BILL. 

Tbc CHAir^MAN, What ivonld become of tbe service if lie could not 
find a substitute v/lio Jacked the same conscience ? 

Mr. Elliott. I tliink it of great importance, from my staiid-point as 
a Christian minister, that everybody should have that sort of conscience. 
It is of the highest importance. 

Senator Call. We can not legislate in regard to the individual con- 
science. 

Mr. Elliott. I understand that. 

Senator Call. You do not propose to ask us to do that 1 

Mr. Elliott. Not at all. 

Senator Palmer. I understand the point the reverend gentleman 
makes to be that the state, by compelling these duties to be performed 
on Sunday, is debauching the public conscience on that point. 

Senator Call. That is a diiferent thing. I understood him to say 
that the state was trifling with the conscience of the church. 

Mr. Elliott. I wish to add a word on this point of conscience. The 
legislation which we propose is not merely with regard to national serv- 
ice, but to such private service as is under the control of the national 
law. There a man can easily be discharged who refuses to work on 
Sunday, and any provision that you make for a substitute in such cases 
would probably be unconstitutional ab initio. You can not enter that 
far into the domain of private business. 

Senator Call. But in regard to the public business we could provide, 
for instance, that Seventh-Day Baptists might perform the service. 

Mr. Elliott. Certainly ; but if the million men employed on the 
railways (I can not state the number, but it is a much larger number 
than we have in the ]>ublic service altogether) are not protected by a 
Sunday law of the United States you make it impossible for scrupulous 
Christian men to compete for such positions. 

The Chairman. Your position is, if I may epitomize it, that the 
postal and other Government employes who do public work on the Sab- 
bath and the employes of railroad and other private corporations who 
perform work which is now done on the Sabbath, by the will of the 
employers of such laboring i)eople, must choose between the violation 
of their conscience and the abandonment of their means of livelihood 
under the present customs and laws. 

Mr. Elliott. Yes, sir; as regards any constitutional question in- 
volved in a religous test, the fact that Sunday is anon -legal day in 
the common law, coming with the strain of our traditions and as an im- 
memorial custom, makes its observance a part of the very organization 
and liber of our sociecy rather than a religions test. Its mention in the 
Constitution in the case of the President sufaciently proves that tbe 
framers of that document did not regard it a religious test. 

Senator Call. Do you propose that Congress shall make provision 
to pay the people in the employ of the Government who are exempted 
on Sunday for Sunday work f 

I\lr. Elliott. I expect you to give them an adequate compensation. 

Senator Call. Do you propose that the law shall provide that the 
Game amount shall be paid for six days' work as for seven 1 

Idr. Elliott. I do, for the reason that we believe these employes can 
do all the work that is to be done in six days, and if they do all the 
Vv'ork they ought to have all the pay. / 

Senator Call. How will that comport with private affairs ? 

Mr. Elliott. Other gentlemen have already argued that question 
here at length. We believe that the State is richer and that the En 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 49 

glish-speaking peoples arc richer tlirougli the centuries for having rested 
one day in seven. 

Senator Call. All that part of the proposition maybe granted to 
yoiij but the simple question is, Trill the people of the country consent to 
pay for six days' work the same as for seven ? 

Mr. Elliott. It is not a question whether they will. 

Senator Gall. The econoinio proposition is whether it can possiblj' 
be done ? 

Mr. Elliott. Whether the people will consent to it or not, is not the 
question. 

Senator Call. The Government can do no more than the people. It 
is a Government of the people. 

Mr. Elliott. As a matter of fact they will have to do it. The eco- 
nomic law holds good that in the long run the shortening of hours and 
the regulation of labor does not affect the whole body of wages which, 
as an economic principle, comes out of the fixed wage fund. 

Senator Call. I grant that ; but how does it affect the man who hap- 
pens to be sick on Sunday ? He requires attention of some kind. How 
does it affect the man who is in danger of being murdered or mobbed ? 

Mr. Elliott. The bill excepts works of mercy and charity. 

Senator Call. Then it will depend entirely upon the definition as to 
what is a work of mercy ^ 

Mr. Elliott. That is true. You are in the domain of judicial con- 
struction then, and there is quite a large body of decisions bearing on 
that point. 

Senator Call. But the question is, how far you can differentiate the 
wages paid to an employ^ of the Government or to an employe in pri- 
vate life ; how far it is practicable for you to establish a standard of that 
kind? 

Mr. Elliott. As a matter of fact, in the majority of employments in 
all the productive industries, there is absolute rest on Sunday. 

Senator Call. The Government requires certain service to be per- 
formed in tbe railway mail service. Suppose the Government says that 
service shall not be performed which renders necessary the employ- 
ment of those men on the Sabbath day f Here are a million men em- 
ployed on the railroads. Here are these private corporations who em- 
ploy a million men. By what law and what process are you going to 
compel those corporations to pay their employes the same price for six 
days' work that they now pay for seven ? 

Mr. Elliott. Congress can not compel them. They would be com- 
pelled to do so by an economic law. 

Senator Call. Economic law and national law are different. We are 
talking about a national law. 

The Chairman. Let me suggest that the national eight-hour law is 
based upon the question you are arguing so far as the public work is 
concerned. 

Senator Call. But the point is, how is this national legislation going 
to benefit these employ<f^s ? That is the proposition the reverend gen- 
tleman has been arguing; not whether eight hours is to be the standard. 
The point is to show how this national law is going to make these private 
individuals pay as much for six days' work as for seven. 

Mr. Elliott. Even John Stuart Mill in his essay on Liberty (p. 155), 
in a paragraph in which he is opposing Sunday laws, declares that — 

The operatives are undoubtedly ri^'ht in tliinkinjr tbat i-f all worked on Sunday, 
seven day?;' work would liavc to bo given for six days' wages. 
S. Mis. 43 4 



60 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

It is carious to note that in a following passage he opposes laws 
against Mormon polygamy. 

Senator Caxl. Then you do not want any law to give the same wages 
for six days as for seven ? 

Mr. Elliott. We do not want any law tq make wages. That ques- 
tion will care for itself. Allow me to acid that it does not appear that the 
private corporations referred to are unwilling that some law shall be 
passed prohibitiog, or at least regulating, Sunday work. Probably 
many would welconie a law which would bear equally upon all parties 



SEMAEKS BY DE, HEEEICK JOHHSOH. 

Mr. Crafts. Dr. Herrick Johnson, of Chicago, will be the next 
speaker. 

Mr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, to my mind JDr. Lewis has given his 
whole case away in saying that he wants nothing that will interfere 
with the best interests of the community. It would be simply impos- 
sible to destroy the rest day and allow one person to take one rest day 
during the week, and another to take another, and conduct the public 
business. 

We all agree that one day should be set apart for rest in the interest 
of the community. The great body of the people — an inconsiderable 
fraction to the contrary — believe that Sunday is the day set apart for 
that purpose. It would hv impossible to set two days apart. The 
Seventh-day Baptists, for instance, holding stock in a railroad where 
the majority of the stock is held by parties who believe in the Sunday 
rather than the Saturday rest, could not have its work stopped Satur- 
day in addition to Sunday. So it would be all through ; business could 
not be done on the principle he states without surrendering the very 
point he defends, which is, that the best interests of the community 
require a suspension of labor upon one day in seven. 

With reference to the basis for the question of conscience he has 
raised, what is it ? To my mind it is making a fetich of the letter. 
The Lord established a feast, and afterwards abrogated it. So He es- 
tablished a rest day, and afterwards abrogated it and instituted an- 
other. The feast of the Passover He set aside, and instituted another 
feast, the Lord^s Supper. The Saturday rest He set aside and appointed 
another day for rest. 

This appointment of one day in seven is arbitrary. There is nothing 
in nature to indicate that division of time. There is the day of twenty- 
four hours, there is the month, there is the year, all these are natural 
divisions ; but there is nothing in nature to indicate the weekly division j 
the observance of one day in seven. It is arbitrary, and we regard that 
as an evidence of its Divine origin. 

The Chairman. How do you base the Sabbath itself upon a Divine 
ordinance when there is no natural law to indicate which day is to be 
observed ? 

Mr. Johnson. It is in Revelation, and it is found to be exactly in ac- 
cord with the laws of nature. 

The Chairman. Tou base the law of one day's rest in seven upon 
revelation ; that is to say, upon the Bible ? 

Mr. Johnson. Yes, sir. 

The Chairman. There are many who doubt that it is established by 
revelation, are there not ? 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 51 

Mr. Johnson. I tbiiik no one wlio accepts tlie Bible doubts that there 
is one day in seven to be observed as a day of rest. 

The Chairman. Will you just state the authority ? 

Mr. Johnson. ''Keinember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." * * * 
" Six days slialt thou labor and do all thy work." 

The CnAiKiviAN. Is there any other? 

Mr. Johnson. There are references to this law all throns^h th& Bible. 

The Ghaiuman. I^ow you come and change that Sabbath day to 
which the Lord there refers. 

Mr. Johnson. That we hold was changed by the Lord himself. 

The Chairman. When did He do that, and by what language? 

Mr. Johnson. There was a meeting for worship on the first day in 
the week, the day the Lord arose, and seven days after there was an- 
other meeting for the same purpose, and then it is referred to as the 
Lord's day. 

The Chairman. After the change? 

Mr. Johnson. Yes, sir; after the change. 

The Chairman. It is based, then, upon two or three days being ob- 
served as days of religious worship after the resurrection 1 

Mr. Johnson. Yes, sir. Now, let us look at the impracticability of 
the question raised here and see where this matter of conscience rests. 
It is now half past 10 in Chicago. It is half past 11 here. If one of the 
Seventh-day Baptists should start west from Chicago to go around the 
world, always keeping each seventh successive day, when he got back 
to Chicago he would be keeping Friday instead of Saturday, as the 
Sabbath ; and another Seventh-day Baptist who went the other way 
around the world would be keeping Sunday instead of Saturday for the 
Sabbath when he got back. That is what comes of making a fetich of 
the letter. 

REMARKS BY REV. BYRON SUIfBERLANI), B. B. 

Mr. Crafts. The Eev. Dr. Sunderland, of this city, will now address 
the committee. 

Mr. Sunderland. Senators, we come before you as your fellow- 
countrymen, your fellow-citizens, your fellow-patriots, and your fellow- 
Christians. We come here to ask of you in your high places, as the 
successors of the great men, the great Christians, who founded this Gov- 
ernment and who gave to us the Constitution of the nation, such legis- 
lation as shall tend to preserve the Sabbath of our forefathers, and 
transmit it in its purity and simx)licity to the latest generation. AVe do 
not ask of you any novel thing. Look back to the records of a hundred 
years ago; look back to the action of the Congress of 1779; look back 
to the i)roclamations and orders of Washington, the utterances of such 
men as Franklin and Adams, and all the great Christians who have been 
prominent in the history of this country. You know. Senators, the 
record of the i)ast, and you know that those fathers bequeathed to us 
the Christian Sabbath. 

We are aware of those great changes in society and in our country 
which, 1 will say, more particularly for the last quarter of a century, 
have given a vast strain to the public morals of the nation, and we ap- 
prcciaie thoroughly the diiliculties of legislation on almost any ques- 
tion that comes before Congress. But we feel that you have the right 
uud that you are endowed with the perogative of legislation on this as 



52 eUNDAY REST BILh, 

well as every other subject wMch affects tlie general interests and wel- 
fare of tiie people. 

I ^yas going on in a different direction, but tbis question Iiatini? 
arisen tiere unexpectedly, in wliicli tlie lionoiable cli airman seems to 
have felt an interest and as be would like to have somethinf^ said in 
reply to his question, I will cliaoge mj line of remark entirely. 

The Chairman. Pleas© take three minutes on your orlgiBal or de- 
signed line of remark. 

Mr. SuNDEBLAlv'D. If yoii will allow me I should like to go directly 
to the ansTJ-er to your question, especially in view of what our friend 
Dr. Lewis has said. 

The Chaieman. Proceed, doctor. 

Mr. SuKDBELAWD. I Understood the purport of the question to be, On 
what authority of the Bible do we base this claim of the Christian 
Sabbath'? Was that the question ? 

The OhAIUMAN. Consider it so. 

Mr. SuNDEKLAND. In the cosmogony of Moses, it is stated in refer- 
ence to the structure of the physical universe that the sun and moon 
and stars of heaven were to be for signs and seasons and days and 
years. Those were the great chronometers of time for the human race. 
But you will observe that there is no division, no specification of a sep- 
tenary of time; there is no division of days into periods of seven. There 
is nothing said about it there, and yet afterwards in the Scriptures, all 
through one of the most prominent divisions of time is the septenary, 
the weekly period. We find upon examination of the Scriptures that 
there are three distinct weekly periods pointed out and legislated for. 
One is the creation week, the other is tile Jewish week, and the third 
is the Christian week. 

Senator Palmer. Will you permit me to ask a question right there, 
and I do it for information, not in the spirit of cavil? 

Mr. SuNDERLAKD. Certainly. 

Senator Palmer. Does not the division by seven possibly come from 
the lunar calendar, from the quarters of the moon I 

Mr. Sunderland. No, sirj because-— — 

Senator Palmer. Was not that the ancient system of measurement 
of time? 

Mr. Sunderland. Oh, yes ; the Jewish calendar is all made up on 
the movements of tlie moon. 

Senator Palmer. I do not know that that really involves the division 
of seven. 

Mr. Sunderland. Kot quite, because the days of the month, of 
course, according to the movements of the heavens, varied somewhat. 

Senator Call. That does not touch the doctor's argument at all. The 
doctors argument is not upon the structural division. 

Senator Palmer, Tlie point was made by Dr. Johnson, of Chicago, 
and I asked for inforsuation. 

Mr. Johnson. I would say that it does not, because four weeks do 
not make a lunar month. The month is not exactly so many days. 

llr. Sunderland. There is a variation in the month. 

Tiie Chairman. It makes a month of thirty days. 

Senator Palbier. But that is the Julian calendar. 

Mr. Sunderland. I should be very glad to communicate any infor- 
mation we may have that may be desired if time were allowed. 

Senator Palmer, I merely threw in the suggestion. Proceed with 
the line of your argument. 

Mr. Sunderland. We iind in the Scriptures, and it is a fundamental 



SUNDAY REST BILL. bo 

distinction of the iveekly period^ that if" consists of six sccuhir days, 
follo'',Ted by a seventh — a sacred day, or day of rest. That was the case 
^Yith the creation week, and the order is not changed anywhere under 
any dispensation— the paradisaic, the patriarchal, the Jewish, or the 
Christian. A week consists of six secular days, followed by a seventh, 
a sacred day. So far as the records of the Bible sho-^v, there is no no- 
tice anywhere of the change from the creation week to the Jewish week 
or of the change from the Jewish week to the Christian week. 

I ought to state further how this division of weeks arises. In every 
case — in the creation week, in the Jewish week, and in the Christian 
week — they are reckoned from and founded upon some great providen- 
tial event. The creation week is founded upon and reckoned from the 
creation of this world. The Jewish week, which was designed for a 
particular and special nation, is founded upon and reckoned from the 
falling of the manna. The Christian week is founded upon and reckoned 
from the greatest providential event of all, the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. 

In the twentieth chapter of John's gospel you will find that there on 
a certain day it was found that He arose. On the evening of the same 
day He met with His disciples. Eight days afterwards He met with 
them again. That is the record of the first Christian week. 

The intercalary day on which He rose I maintain is called " a Sab- 
bath," or " one of the Sabbaths," and that the phrase " the first day of 
the week," which we find in our English version, ought never to have 
been there; and even as it stands there it has no vital significance in 
this discussion. It belongs to the old Jewish calendar, the Jewish 
system, and it does not belong to the Christian dispensation, to the 
Christian week, or the Christian Sabbath. 

The Christian Sabbath is the seventh day of the Christian week and 
comes directly under the Eourth Commandment of the decalogue : 

Six days slia.lt thou labor aud do all thy work, but tbe seyenth is the Sabbath of 
tho Lord ; in that thou shalt do no work ; thou shalt rest. 

The Chaiuman. You claim that our Sunday is the seventh day ? 

Mr. Sunderland. It is the seventh day of the Christian week. 

The Chairman. And therefore Dr. Lewis in observing the seventh 
day, should observe the day follov/ing that which he does observe? 

Mr. Sunderland. Certainly ; he is back in old Jewish times. He is 
following the Jewish calendar to-day, with which we have nothing in 
the world to do. 

The Chairman. Dr. Lewis does not concede that, I take it. 

Mr. Le-wis. ]Sro, sir. 

Mr. Sunderland. It is true. That is my humble opinion. 

The Chairman. It is an issue between you and Dr. Lewis. 

Mr. Sunderland. Yes, sir. That is just my humble opinion. If 
any man will examine the original Greek text he will see that there is 
nothing in the world about " the first day of the week." 

The Chairman. We shall have to leave out the Greek. Was there 
any other point you wished to present ? 

Mr. Sunderland. I could talk all day. 

The Chairman. But you have stated your position? 

Mr. Sunderland. I have given just the one idea. 

The Chairman. This is all based upon your assumption that tho 
days mentioned in Genesis are literal days which were established dur- 
ing the time when even f'-.e sun itself did not exist, and that the ques- 
tions between you and the geologists are settled in favor of the Mosaic 
hteral account of the creation ? 



54 StfNDAY REST BILL. 

Mr. Sunderland, I take it the honorable Senator will remember the 
twentieth chapter of Exodus where Moses explains that thing. 

The Chairman. Certainly. I am expressing no opinions. I am try- 
ing to illustrate the grounds of difference that exist and that we will 
meet with if we try to push the bill. We have got to meet men who 
will even cavil, and you must not assume that friendly suggestions are 
antagonistic to your views or those of anybody else. 

Mr. Sunderland. I understand that. I wish to say that for one I 
am as great a stickler for* the rights of private conscience as any man 
in this country, and for liberty regulated by law; but I do not want 
that liberty to degenerate into licentiousness, and I do not want the 
sacred day of God, the Christian Sabbath, the seventh day of the 
Christian week under the Christian dispensation, so desecrated as it 
was in the days of Charles the Second. 



EEMAEKS BY'EEV. C. H. PAYHE, B. D. 

Mr. Crafts. Eev. C. H. Payne, D. D., of j^ew York, will speak of the 
*^ personal liberty'' phase of the Sabbath question. 

Mr. Payne. Honorable Senators, I do not wish to call your attention 
specifically to the religious aspects of this question; not because they 
are not of importance to you, but because the judicial and governmental 
and prudential aspects of the case are more fitting for consideration 
in a place like this. 

You are aware that there have arisen recently in our country organi- 
zations calling themselves " personal liberty leagues,'' which demand 
that Sabbath laws, in closing business on the Sabbath, shall make an 
exception for the liquor traffic. I claim that tbis is a demand for a 
species of class legislation. Such legislation, as you well know, is dan- 
gerous in any country, especially among a free and self governed people. 

They demand that a peculiar class of people and a special business 
shall be exempted from laws which are applicable elsewhere through- 
out our entire Government. Nearly, if not quite, every State in the 
Union makes common labor and traffic on the Sabbath day a misde- 
meanor. They ask exemption from that, in the nature of class legisla- 
tion, which it would be injurious to the liberties of the people to grant. 

I oppose these personal liberty leagues also be-cause they seek to 
seat more firmly on its throne the most despotic power known to civili- 
zation. I am not using words rashly when I thus characterize the sa- 
loon ; and any special exemption for that traffic, asked of sensible and 
intelligent men to-day, will hardly commend itself to them. I need not 
prove to yc>u the power that this great traffic has over our whole coun- 
try. It endangers the liberty of the people in that it largely controls 
their votes. I will cite a single illustration. In the city of New York it 
has recently been shown that one brewery holds mortgages on more than 
six hundred saloons. The number of votes that are controlled thereby 
(and the same has been said by Mr. Edward Everett Hale in regard to 
Boston and other cities) you can easily see. 

While these personal liberty leagues make their plea for Sunday open- 
ing in the interest of the workingman, they necessarily oppress the work- 
ingman, because they ask what can not be granted to all without de- 
stroying the rest day — ^the one day that nearly every State in the Union 
has made non-legal, with evident intent that it should be separated 
from other days and be freer from the burdens of life, and so bring its 
benison of privilege and of helpfulness to the workingmen. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. §5 

Mr. John Stuart Mill has well said : 

The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all worked on Sunday seven 
days' work would have to be given for six days' wages.* 

That will be the outcome in this country, as it is in other countries, 
if our Sabbath laws are overthrown. We claim that nothing but the 
protection of the law for a civil Sabbath can guard the rest day as a 
boon to the workingman. Amid the exactions of capital, the greed of 
men, and the competition of business, the rest day must inevitably go 
and a working day be substituted for it, unless the angel of law stands 
at the gate of the Sabbatic Eden with flaming sword in hand to keep 
away the spoiler. 

Again, and finally, these Personal Liberty Leagues demand in the 
uj'.me of liberty what is in every way subversive of the real liberties of 
the people and in harmony with despotism. There is a contradiction 
between what they claim and their real fruits. 

The Chairman. Why do you say that of them ? 

Mr. Payne. They hold that all Sabbath laws are an assault on what 
they call the basic principle of our republican government, but, in fact, 
a civil Sabbath, made non-legal and protected by law, is an essential 
basic principle of our Government, without which it is in danger of be- 
coming a despotism. 

Judge Noah Davis, in a speech in New York last year on this subject, 
well said : 

There can. he no liberty without law; there can be no personal liberty except in 
obedience to law. 

And Senator Keagan, of Texas, in arguing this question with Mr. 
Jefferson Davis in the prohibitory campaign in that State, well said, in 
substance: 

You may search the English charter and whatever there is in the Constitution of 
the United States concerning the rights of man, and all the bills of rights of the sev- 
eral States, and you will not find a single sentence in. which there is any protection 
for that which is injurious to the interests of society. 

We claim that the open bar on Sunday, and all noisy public amuse- 
ments, such as parades, creating disorder, destroying the peace of the 
Sabbath day, are inimical to the highest interests of society, and tend 
to overthrow the liberties of the majority of our people. 

We ask your attention also to the fact that there never has been in 
all history such an audacious dem?nd made upon a people as is made 
upon the American people by the Personal Liberty Leagues. It is not 
a few malcontents who are aggrieved, but the American people, who^se 
rights are invaded, whose liberties are assaulted, whose long cherished 
history^ and traditions these leagues seek to overthrow. 

We are audaciously asked to abandon a policy that the nation from 
the very beginning has observed, and which has elevated it to its i)res- 
ent greatness and its pre-eminent place among the nations of the earth — 
we are asiied to abandon that policy and to grant what these leagues 
are pleased to call ''personal liberty,'^ which means license to a fow 
malcontents to do as they please on the Sabbath. I hold that, whether 
it is regarded as religious or not, the observance of one day in the week 
by our forefathers and by every State in the Union, and by this whole 
nation throughout all its historj-, has elevated it to its preeminent 
place of greatness, and we think it an insult to be asked to abandon the 
policy at this late day. 



* "On Liberty," near end of Chap. IV. 



56 SUNDAY REST BILL, 



EEMAEKB BY PEOE. ALOE'ZO T. JONES. 

The Chairman. There are gentlemen present who wish to be heard 
in opposition to the bill. Prof. Alonzo T. Jones, of Battle Creek Col- 
lege, Michigan, is one of those who have spoken to mo in regard to it. 
"Will yon not state, Professor Jones, what your desire is"? 1 have no 
doubt that we can obtain leave of the Senate to sit during its session 
to-day. It is exceedingly desirable to go on with this hearing and com- 
plete it now. How would such an arrangement comport with your con- 
venience? State fist, please, whom you represent and your reasons 
for desiring to be heard. 

Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, we represent the organization known as 
the Seventh-Day Adventists. It is true we have been entirely ignored 
by the other side, The very small, as they stated it, sect of Seventh- 
Day Baptists have been recognized, but we are more than three times 
their number, and much more than that in the force of our work. We 
have organizations in every State and Territory in the Union. We have 
the largest printing house in Michigan, the largest printing house on 
the Pacific coast, a printing establishment in Basle, Switzerland, one 
in Christiana, j!^orway, and one in Melbourne, Australia. Our mission 
fields and mission work run almost around the world, besides in the 
body of Europe, and we come bere for a hearing, with the consent of 
the committee. 

The Chairman. Where do you reside ? 

Mr. Jones. At the present time in Michigan. My borne, for the past 
four years, has been in California. My family are in Ohilotte. I am 
teacher of history in Battle Creek College, Michigan. 

I must say in justice to ourselves, and also in behalf of the body 
which I represent, that we dissent almost wholly, I might say wholly, 
from the position taken by the representative of the Seventh-Day Bap- 
tists here. I knew the instant when Dr. Lewis stated what he did 
here he had given his case away. We have not given our case away, 
Senators, nor do we expect to do so. We expect to go deeper than has 
been gone yet at this hearing, both upon the principle and facts, and 
upon the logic of the facts. 

The Ch AXEMAN. This matter is all familiar to you. You are a pro- 
fessor of history. Can you not go on this afternoon ? 

Mr. Jones. Yes ; if I can have a space between now and this after- 
noon to get my papers together. I have some references to make that 
I did not bring with me. 

The Chairman. Very well. 



EEMARKS BY JOHN B. WOLFF. 

Mr. John B. Wolff appeared. 

The Chairman. Whom do you represent f 

Mr. Wolff. I represent the Secular League of the Fnited States and 
National Defense Association, bodies organized for the purpose of pre- 
venting the encroachment of ecclesiastical ideas upon legislation. That 
is, we are personal liberty people. 

The Chairman. You represent the Personal Liberty League ? 

Mr. Wolff. jS"o, sir 5 I do not belong to that association. 

The Chairman. Could you go ob for fifteen minutes now f 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 57 

Mr. Wolff. I will do so, altliough I sbould prefer to liear all tlie 
other speakers first. 

Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, ladies and gentle- 
men : My first point is very briefly to make a formal protest as to the 
equity of this hearing. I am limited now to fifteen minutes, or it may 
be a little more, when this case has been heard on the other side on 
former occasions, and heard at great length to-day from the otlier side. 
It is utterly impossible co discuss either the main question at issue, much 
less to attempt a formal reply to what has been said. The time is 
wholly inadequate to meet the case. I shall have to content myself as 
much as possible with generics. 

There are two great dangers to republics and to societies. The first 
is ambiguity of constitutional compacts, lack of clearness 5 and the sec- 
ond is the logical effect of strained interpretations of those ambiguities, 
which inevitably, in the state of human imperfection, lead to abuses. 

I can not approach this subject as I should like to, but I want to state, 
first of all, in regard to the Constitution, that in the organization of this 
Government an attempt was made to define specifically the powers and 
functions of the Congress of the United States. Among the questions 
that were in the common mind at that time was this very religious 
question. 

Those of you familiar with the history of the country are aware of 
the fact that we had de faoto the establishment of church and state 
prior to the organization of the Government, and the limitations placed 
in the Constitution of the United States against the exercise of the 
powers of Congress in this direction grew out of the fact that the in- 
choate States feared that there might be an attempt on the part of the 
generic compact to interfere with the rights of conscience in the in- 
choate or perfected States ; i. €., the right to establish a State religion. 
Hence the prohibition is against Congress alone, while the States sever- 
ally are left perfectly free, and can at any time create a State religion 
without in any degree violating the Constitution of the United States. 

In the Constitution of the United States there are but four distinct 
questions of common morality delegated to Congress. All other ques- 
tions of common morality derived by inference, either direct or remote, 
from the palpable teachings and the letter of that document are dan- 
gerous procedures and precedents for the future of this or any other 
country which violates the principle involved. 

K you will take the prohibition quoted by Senator Call with regard 
to the prerogatives of Congress in this direction, that Congress shall 
not pass any law in respect to the establishment of any form of religion, 
it applies as clearly as logical facts and language can make it apply 
to the point, that they may do by indirection that which tliey can not 
do by the strict letter of the document itself. I look upon this move- 
ment as an attempt to do by indirection that which is forbidden by the 
letter and the spirit of the compact which binds us together, and when- 
ever legislative bodies disrespect the spirit and letter of tlie coojpact 
there is an end of government and an end of personal liberty with 
government. 

The theory prevailing in this movement is the common, old, and fal- 
lacious one that the end Justifies the means; that you may do evil that 
good may come ; that you may stretch the Constitution of the United 
States to its utmost limit under the plea that the object which you have 
in view is a good one. There never was a more dangerous basis for ac- 
tion, either in i)ublic legislation or private morality. 

The magnitude of this movement to enforce this innovation is appall- 



58 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

iiig to men who occupy the position I do, and yet there is an element of 
salvation in it ; for right hereon this floor 1 find represented three or 
four distinct divisions antagonizing each other j and that will necessa- 
rily have a preserving influence. 

I wish to say, as I pass, with regard to the argument of Dr. Lewis, that 
however he may have given himself away incidentally, that any man 
with a logical inind and a clear conception of human rights who will 
take that argument and carry it to its logical results can only reach the 
one conclusion, and that is that you have no right to interfere with the 
conscience of anybody. 

The Chairman. What if a man conscientiously believes in Mor- 
monism? 

Mr. Wolff. You have no right to interfere with his conscientious 
belief in any form of religion, even if it is devil worship. 

The Chairman. Have you any right to interfere with his practice if 
it be in conformity with his conscientious belief? 

Mr. Wolff. If his practice impinges upon the convictions of the ma- 
jority, the majority makes right in this country, whether moral or oth- 
erwise. 

The Chairman. How if the majority see fit to establish the Sabbath? 

Mr. W^OLFF. He has to submit to inevitable necessity. Have I an- 
swered your question ? 

The Chairman. Certainly. I only wanted to get your view. 

Mr. Wolff, As the chairman has raised this question perhaps I 
ought to digress, but I shall not take my time in that way. 

The Chairman. You introduced the point, and it was a very im- 
portant one. 

Mr. Wolff. Allow me, Mr. Chairman, to compliment you upon the 
questions you have asked, bringing out the points in this case as well 
as the others. 

I find here not only this^diversity of sentiment, but I find represented 
in the bodies here making this demand a desire ostensibly that we shall 
have a civil Sunday (to which I do not object, and which I would help 
to enforce), but in reality a religious Sunday, a part of them taking the 
civil side and a part the ecclesiastical side, and both making common 
cause for a common purpose. 

This is not the most extraordinary feature of this assembly to those 
who are conversant with the history of ecclesiasticism. From the 
highest power and unrestrained rule of the Roman Catholic Church 
down to the time when the Eeformation commenced and from then down 
till now there has been the greatest possible antagonism between the 
Catholics and Protestants as to the interpretation of the same Bible, 
each believing that the other is exactly wrong and will land where 
brimstone is in excess of comfort, you may call it sheol if you please. 

I find here to- day before me in that petition the representatives of the 
Eoman heirarchy. For what purpose ? That there shall be a com}3ul- 
sory x3rocess enforced upon the consciences of men to compel them to 
the observance of religious institutions. Here these hosts are making 
common cause against common liberty. 

Mr. Sunderland. Will the gentleman allow me just one question? 

Mr. Wolff. Yes, vsir. 

The Chairman. Allow me to say that it has been found by experi- 
ence that when a public hearing before a Senate comimittee becomes a 
conversation between persons w^ho choose to attend and listen to it, the 
confusion which results destroys the hearing. Any question suggested 
I will put to Mr. Wolii*. You 'may pass thequestion in writing. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 59 

Mr. Sunderland. I will pass it in writing to the chair mau. 

Mr. Wolff. Very good. 

The Chairman. Proceed, Mr. Wolfit". 

Mr. Wolff. 1 call your attentiou to the fact that this immense branch 
represented as being about half the entire number who are making this 
appeal (I refer to the Catholic Church) inCatholiccouutries do not enforce 
the observance of the Sabbath. Their standard of the Sabbath differs 
essentially from your standard of the Sabbath. They have entertain- 
ments, dances, buU-hghts, and theaters on Sunday. They attend the 
regular church services with due formality, but after that is done and 
the religious conditions are complied with, they enjoy themselves in any 
way that suits them the rest of the day. I have nothing to do with 
their consistency, but they are here consorting under a republican Gov- 
ernment for an end which their associates refuse where they have the 
power to carry it out under the Governments they control. 

The Chairman. Please discuss the subject, and not those who have 
chosen to appear before the committee. 

Mr. Wolff. I shall come to the point of my argument, as the chair- 
man suggests. I have notes plenty here to keep me for two hours or 
more, but I shall not follow the specihc arguments. I have not at- 
tempted to do this, and I shall not now. 

Going back to the very gist of the argument^ I concede as you must 
concede the human, and conceding the human you naust concede the 
divine right of every intelligent, responsible human being to his own 
belief, both with regard to doctrines and observances j that minorities 
have rights as well as majorities (which majorities seldom respect), and 
that when you invade my right personally as to the non-observance of 
any religious day or festival, you justify me when I am in the majority 
in invading your right of conscience as to the observance of such a 
day. There is no safety in society at any time or jjlace, under any sys- 
tem of religious or civil law, when the rights of each individual, as one 
gentleman said here to-day, no matter how humble, no matter how much 
he may dissent from the common public opinion, shall be held less 
sacred than the rights of the majority. 

It is only in the mutual respect for and enforcement of the rights of 
the individual that we can establish permanency in society and state, 
and only by that means. What is being attempted to be done by this 
movement, is an invasion of individual right. Though I stood alone in 
the whole IJnit^^d States, no matter what the opposition, I should rise and 
protest against any movement that contravenes my right to believe 
what I please in regard to infinite causes and the laws of infinite mind, 
in this life or the life to come. 

That is why I am here to protest. This is exactly what you are do- 
ing : You are setting a precedent which, when the sentiment of the 
world shall come up to this standard of individual conscience and right 
of action, may re-act against you in the most terrible manner, because 
they who play with tire and sword are apt to get burnt and cut. 

I will say in regard to the secular side of this question, as Senator 
Call intimated in his interrogatories, that no man is bound to work for 
the Government, that no man is bound to become a candidate for the 
Senate or House or to fill any of the appointive otfices of the Govern- 
ment. That is his election. Therefore the argument that he is com- 
pelled to do the work has no value. It is his right to withdraw; to 
abstain from the service of the Government, and thus protect his 
conscience, and if he is a good man and conscientious he will certainly 
do so. 



60 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

As I am not at liberty for lack of time to go into a specific answer to 
the arguments which have been offered to-day, I will indulge just a 
moment on another point. 

One gentleman here raised the question with regard to the difficulty 
of the Christian Sabbath. It is a physical impossibility to institute a 
Christian Sabbath of any specific number of hours upon the whole face 
of the earth, of any kind whatever. As you change towards the polar- 
ities of the earth you diminish or increase in the length of your days; 
and as the earth revolves upon its axis from west to east you compel, 
so far as the day-light and the measurement of time are concerned, the 
adoption* of a different period of time, for one day in one place from 
another. 

The only thing that you can do to accomplish this purpose is to make 
a theory of one-seventh portion of the time, and adjust it as well as you 
may to the physical conditions of our solar system. The gentleman as- 
sents to that. That is the truth. You will then have an exact con- 
formity. 

I wish to call attention to another point in this solar system business. 
Kot only is there a difficulty as you travel from east to west, but if you 
start from the east and go west, after you pass the line you will get two 
Sundays in one week. That is a physical difficulty you probably had 
not thought of at all. 

With regard to the difficulties in the minds of these ecclesiastical gen- 
tlemen on the subject of the measurement of time by the Jews, I prob- 
ably can throw a little light on that subject. There is not any doubt 
that the chairman is right in regard to the divisions of seven, by the 
quarters of the moon, nor is there any doubt, if you will search the his- 
tory of the past, that the months of the ancient Jew^s were lunar months 
and properly measured twenty-eight days in round numbers. 

If you will take their history and the statements in regard to the 
great age of the patriarchs made in the Bible, and explain them by 
that law of interpretation, you will find that a good deal of mystery 
will disappear from that book which is past understanding at the pres- 
ent time* Divide the ages by 12 or 13 and you get a reasonable age. 
The change by adding the days to correspond to the solar year came as 
a matter of course in the progress of time, for they had thirteen months, 
or thereabouts, instead of twelve. This spoils the longevity business. 

The question of religious belief and observance is a question between 
a man's own conscience and his God, if he has any. If he has not any, 
then that ends the matter with regard to him. The question is limited 
right there, and it is a matter that the State has no right to interfere 
with, either directly or indirectly. 

Now, take ray own case. Excuse me, gentlemen, I am a graduated 
theologian. I have been through the mill that grinds out preachers, t 
studied the question from the beginning to the end of it, and I reached 
the conclusion that you are in error, that I was wrong; 1 have changed 
my position on the subject, and I am a personal liberty man. I am per- 
fectly willing that you shall have your Sabbath, your churches, your 
Sunday-schools, and all the forms of religious exercises that are neces- 
sary to your individual happiness and growth. But I am iierfectly un- 
willing that you shall trespass one inch upon my domain, and in any way 
interlere with my right to scan it, to weigh it, to measure it, to study it, 
to form my own opinions about it, to regulate my own life by it, and to 
be a man for myself without regard to any external influences brought 
to bear upon me. 

I wish now to call your attention to another point in this controversy. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 61 

Ecclesiasticism has been a despotism, the most tyrannical, oppressive, 
destructive, and cruel that ever attempted to control human thought 
or action. It has drenched the earth with blood, and just in proportion 
as it trespasses in this direction upon human rights it will continue to 
do that thing. What did the Protestants do in the enforcement of their 
idea? What the Catholics did prior to the Eeformation the Protest- 
ants did subsequently to the Reformation to the extent of their ability. 

From the days of the burning of Michael Servetus down to the pres- 
ent time, ecclesiasticism has been, and will always continue to be, a 
despotism. Why? Because it assumes God origin. Because it assumes 
supernatural powers. Because it assumes infallibility of knowledge and 
of belief. These conditions of the human mind as inevitably lead to 
despotism as the exercise of arbitrary power in civil government makes 
despots and tyrants of men. 

The Chairman. Conceding that there are supernatural powers or a 
supernatural power pre-eminent over all others, and that all human 
existence and conditions are an outgrowth or a creation of that power ; 
in other words, assuming the ordinary belief that there is a God and 
that human beings have relations to that God, do you see anything in 
the ecclesiasticism of which you speak, except its abuses, that can be 
objected to ? Are not those relations a legitimate subject of investiga- 
tion, an all-important subject of investigation, and a difficult subject of 
investigation, so that as in all other pursuits of life there may come to 
be a specialty and men may study it as experts study any other subject- 
m.atter, limiting themselves within the proper sphere of the relations 
between man and God ? Is not that ecclesiasticism of which you speak 
to be encouraged rather than condemned ? 

Mr. Wolff. If you will give me an ecclesiasticism that is absolutely 
infallible in its doctrines and acts, I shall have no answer to make to 
you. 

The Ohaieman. Then let me change my question a particle. If you 
require that those human beings who investigate this subject shall be 
perfect, do you not make a condition that is impossible to be complied 
with, and tiierefore in effect say that there shall be no investigation at 
all, since there are none but human beings who are imperfect to con- 
duct that investigation'? 

Mr. Wolff. JSTo, sir. In the first place, I did not make the imx>er- 
fectiou a condition of non-investigation. On the contrary, it is a justifi- 
cation of investigation that they may become more i)erfect. 

The Chairman. Is not the imperfection a common condition of hu- 
manity which nobody can remove? 

Mr. Wolff. It is a common condition of humanity and a perfect and 
absolute barrier to the attempt of the imperfect being to dominate one 
more perfect. 

The Chairman. Would you not say when you speak of domination 
that you reach the condition of abuse on the part of ecclesiasticism of 
which you spoke? 

Mr. Wolff. When the assumptions of ecclesiasticism are those of 
perfection, of deitic ability and authority, the logical effect upon the 
imperfect being is abuse of power. 

The Chairman. Everybody will concede that. 

Mr. Wolff. Everybody must concede it. 

The Chairman. The Protestant and probably the liberal Catholic 
will concede you that. : ! 

Mr. Wolff. The Catholic has to be very liberal, however, to con- 
cede it. 



62 SimDAY REST BILL. 

The Chairman. This right of individual conscience remains. Now 
we come to the condition of society and those regulations which are 
necessary in order that society may be preserved and improved and 
elevated. The majority, including the ecclesiastic whose reasons may 
be the same as those which influence the man who is for the civil Sab- 
bath plus those which come from our relations to the Creator, ask for 
legislation. You say there may be legislation, and that you will assist 
in obtaining it. 

Mr. Wolff. Yes; I am in favor of right legislation. 

The Chaiuman. Does it invalidate the right for this legislation that 
ecclesiastical denominations come here and add to all the reasons which 
you may give for it, the other and to them the stronger sanction of 
their belief that the Divine command requires it? 

Mr. Wolff. The objection I make, in answer to your question, is 
that it is not merely an addition to my argument in favor of a secular 
period of rest established by law but that it carries with it the ecclesi- 
asticism, and that the argument is founded on the fact that the Sab- 
bath is of God- origin specially instituted. 

The Chairman. But these people come here and argue for the God- 
origin of the Sabbath. You concede that the legislation is for the pub- 
lic good, whether their reason be true or false. Is it fair to come here 
and discuss this bill, and urge against the bill, or some bill like it, 
the fact that reasons which you do not believe in can be given in its 
favor when you concede that there should be a Sabbath from your own 
stand-point 1 Whj reply to their argument ? Meet the bill. 

Mr. Wolff. In the first place, I have only conceded under the generic 
false system of society that this day of rest is useful. If you were to 
interrogate me on my ideas of political science and material economy I 
should probably take a different view, but to avoid conflict I make that 
concession and do not bring that question in. 

The Chairman. Here are 65,000,000 people who will promote this 
movement, and from every conceivable stand-point, and you put your 
points with as much force as anybody will before the committee. Have 
you examined the bill ? 

Mr. Wolff. I have read it previously, but not lately. 

The Chairman. Take the bill itself I should like to hear you as to 
the specific provisions in respect to sections or propositions, and know 
what objection you have to them. 

Mr. Wolff. You wish me to take it up seriatim 1 

The Chairman. Yes. 

Mr. Wolff. I could not do that without reading the bill again. I 
will do it now if you will give me time. Take the bill, as you are fa- 
miliar with it, and ask me any question you please on a specific point. 

The Chairman. I should like, if you can give us any light that bears 
upon the merits of the bill, to hear you. If you know nothing about 
the bill it is possible you have taken all the time you need to take. 

Mr. Wolff. Excuse me, I know enough about the bill, having read it 
sometime prior to this hearing but expecting to be heard on Friday in- 
stead of to-day, it was utterly impossible for me to reread the bill. 

The Chairman. Do you wish half an hour at some other time to-day ? 

Mr. W^OLFF. Yes, sir j if you please. 

The Chairman. Yery wellj you may take it. Here is the bill. We 
will give you half an hour later. 

Mr. Wolff. Thank you. 



SUNDAY REST BILL 63 



ADDITIONAL EEMAEKS BY EEV. T. P. STEVEHSOK 

The Chairman. Is tbere auy gentleman iu the room who desires to 
be heard now ? 

Mr. Stevenson. I wish simply to add that the great question in the 
development of government in modern times has been to maintain a 
just balance between the rights of individuals and the rights of society. 
With reference to the rights of individuals, we freely, from our point 
of view, concede that every man has a right to his opinions, whatever 
those opinions may be; the right to his unbelief, the right to dissent 
at every point from the prevailing religious belief of the community in 
which he lives ; the right to argue for his disbelief, to maintain even 
atheistic convictions. On the other hand, society has the right, as it 
seems to us, to express and to maintain itself to act in accordance with 
its convictions. 

In other words, if the people of a nation believe that there is a God, 
they have the right in the sphere of their public life to acknowledge and 
to worship their God, The individual in the sphere of his individual 
life is perfectly free to disregard God altogether, and even free to teach 
his children that there is no God. The nation is free, on the other hand, 
to aclniowiedge its God and to teach its faith in God to its children, to 
write its faith in God on public monuments and embody it in public 
declarations, in days of fasting or thanksgiving, and in all other public 
institutions. 

Wheu, then, the individual assumes to lay a veto upon the right of 
the state, and forbids the state to do anything that he dissents from, it 
seems to us that he presses the rights of the individual so far as to de- 
stroy the rights of society, just as if society, on the other hand, were to 
invade the sphere of his individual life or his own home and forbid him 
there the expression of his opinions. 

Therefore we maintain that this nation is free to acknowledge God 
and His law, and to act in the sphere of its public life in accordance 
with those convictions, while at the same time we w^ould maintain the 
right of every individual citizen in the sphere of his individual life to 
act out his convictions. Only thus, it seems to us, can the just balance 
be preserved between the rights of individuals on the one side and of 
society upon the other. 



ADDITIONAL REMARKS BY REV. A. H. LEWIS, D. D. 

Mr. Lewis. Mr. Chairman, I rise for a word of personal explanation 
in regard to the " giving away" which my friend Dr. Johnson seemed 
to discover. 

The committee will remember that 1 distinctly said that if the run- 
niug of a railroad traiu on Sunday were determined or shown to be 
detrimental to the interests of the Commonwealth I would not ask for 
tliat privilege. I did not agree that the running of a railroad train 
should be determined to be detrimental to the Commonwealth upon the 
gro!ind that Sunday is a sacred day, for I do not believe that; but for 
me to ask the j)rivilege of doing any business that was proven upon 
scientihc grounds and grounds well understood to be detrimental to the 
general interest of the Commonwealth would be a sign of bigotry rather 
than of intelligence. I therefore do not say I would consent to this pro- 



64 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

hibition upon the ground tliat Sunday is a sacred day, but on the ground 
that it would be inimical to the best interests of the Commonwealth. 

The Chairmais'. Would yon consider it inimical to the interests of 
the Commonwealth because it was wrong to do this kind of labor upon 
a sacred day ? 

Mr. Lewis. I would not 5 for I do not consider that Sunday is in any 
sense a sacred day. 

The Chairman. Do you consider that your Sabbath is a sacred day ? 

Mr. Lewis. I do. 

The Chairman. Do you consider that there is a violation of the laws 
of God in the transaction of the ordinary civil employments upon the 
seventh day of the week, or Saturday ? 

Mr. Lewis. I do. 

The Chairman. You then feel that the community at large is engaged 
in a violation of the Sabbath ? 

Mr. Lewis. I do ; and that it should be left to the divine law, arid 
not the secular, to determine what is a violation of the Sabbath. 

The Chairman. There is one difficulty which has occurred to me in 
regard to that matter. The Christians are now about 300,000,000 of the 
1,500,000.000 people on the face of the earth. We believe, as you state, 
as all Christians agree, that there is a Sabbath day, one day in seven. 
The Christians disagree among themselves as to which day it is. You 
say that it is Saturday, others say that it is Sunday. You consider 
that the great majority of Christians are engaged in a violation of the 
Sabbath. They believe that if you work on every day you are engaged 
in a violation of the Sabbath. 

Now, it is as easy to conceive of thr^e divisions of Christians as of 
two in the subtleties of theological discussion, and of four as of three, 
and of five as of four, and of six as of five, and of seven as of six. Sup- 
pose the Christians were divided up into seven equal parts and each one 
believed the Sabbath to be a different day from that which the others 
believed to be the Sabbath. Thus we would have six-sevenths of the 
whole Christian world engaged in violating the Sabbath of the other 
seventh. That is all logical, all mathematical, all supposable, because 
we have the demonstration that here are two divisions of the Christian 
world differing conscientiously and each holding that the other is violat- 
iog the Sabbath. The exsisting facts lead by the ordinary processes of 
reasoning and logic to the supposition which I make, that six-sevenths 
of the whole Christian world may ultimately come to believe that every 
day one-seventh is thus engaged in a violation of the Sabbath. 

is not that a reductio ad absurdum, and does it not lead to this, that 
there can be no such claim made as the theological basis of civil legis- 
lation in reference to the Sabbath, and that we have to deal with this 
question upon a ground on which we all agree, if possible — the ground 
of what is good for human beings here in this world 1 So far as our 
relations to the next world are concerned, of course they should be 
taken into account by each man in the region of his own coascientious 
belief; but if we are to have a day of rest, we must select some partic- 
ular day. You want Saturdaj^, other gentlemen want Sunday ; but if 
five-sevenths thought it should be Thursday we should have to yield to 
the five-sevenths and say that Thursday is the Sabbath, and the others 
would have to conform to it ; for if they do not conform it is impossible 
that there should be any one particular day observed, and you being 
the one-seventh must concede the right of the other six-sevenths to fix 
upon a day and you must observe it. 

Mr. Lewis. Are you through with your question ? 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 65 

The Chairman. It is a speech rather than a question, but it is a liue 
of reflection that comes to my mind occasional!}', and I do not know 
whether I am quite definite myself. 

Mr. Lewis, It brings me where 1 am very glad to make a reply. I 
believe the whole question of the Sabbath to be purely a religious one, 
with wliich the civil law is not at liberty to interfere by way of com- 
pulsion, but only by way of protection ; and upon that ground it should 
be left to the individual action, to the individual conscience, to the in- 
dividual choice ; each man being protected alike. If, as you suppose, 
there should come such a division as that each day of the week would 
be observed, I would have the civil law do nothing more and nothing 
less than protect each man in doing as he believed he ought to do. 

Indeed, there is at once a deep rooted fallacy, as well as a contradic- 
tion, in talking of a "civil Sabbalh." There may be a civil day of ces- 
sation from toil, but there can not be a civil Sabbath. Sabbath-keep- 
ing is a religious conception, starting from the idea of Divine authority 
and nothing less. 

If you will grant me this fact in. the history of Sunday legislation, I 
further say it sprang from the Eoman conception that religion was a 
department of the state. It is not the 'New Testament conception. The 
Kew Testament conception of Christianity, so far as the individual is 
concerned, is purely a spiritual one. The conception which introduced 
legislation in reference to Sunday and associate feast days was the con- 
ception of the Koman Government that religion was a department of 
the state, and that the Emperor ex officio was the head of that depart- 
ment. 

The first distinct legislation under Constantine was, in all its tone, its 
language, its temper, its surroundings, from the pagan stand-point, not 
introducing a single religious idea from the Chiistian. It was sixty-five 
years after Sunday legislation began under the Eoman Empire before 
so much of the Christian idea a|>peared that the term "Lord's day" 
was used in civil law. 

The Chaikman. I wish to ask you a question : Vv^hat is religion ? 

Mr. Lewis. It is that conception of the individual's personal relation 
to God which binds him to obey what he believes God requires. 

The Chairman. You believe that God requires the observance of one 
day in seven? 

Mr. Lewis. I believe that God requires the observance of the sev- 
enth day in an universal, unbroken, and undisturbed cycle of time from 
the earliest period of history, namely, the seventh day of the week. 

The Chairman. You believe that God requiies that? 

IMr. Lewis. I believe that God requires that. 

The Chairman. Suppose that human beings trying to live in accord- 
ance with the will of God re-enact his law and write it on their statute- 
book; is it wrong for society to put into its public laws the requirements 
of the obedience to God and his law ? 

Mr. Lewis. I am very ;Silad that the honorable chairman has raised 
this question, since it gives me an opi^ortunity to say that the effect of 
Sunday legislation has been to desabbatize Sunday by calling the at^ 
tention of the individual to the human authority, and not to the divine. 
The consciencel«?ss state of the American people and the American 
church, and of the European peoples, running back through the centu- 
ries, is the result of thrusting forward the civil conception of the day in 
place of the divine, and so breaking down the true conception of Sab- 
bath-keeping. 

S. Mis. 43 5 



6G ^ SUNDAY REST BILL. 

The Chairman. But here are a fewpoor, unfortunate Senators who 
are called upon to aid in the enactment of laws. Ton say that God re- 
quires the observance of one day in seven. You further say, and all 
agree, that there is not one day in seven that is observed according to 
the command of God. All States have made laws re-enacting the will 
of God, as Mr. Webster said in his 7th-of-March speech, when Congress 
was called on to enact that slavery should not be extended into certain 
of the Territories. He said it could not go there ; it could not live 
there j and to say that slavery could not go into the Territories was 
being called upon to re-enact the will of God. Nobody claims that 
there is any absurdity in this case. The will of God exists. He re- 
quires the observance of the seventh day just as he prohibits murder; 
and as we re-enact His law in making a law and enforcing it against 
murder, so all the States have enacted laws against the desecration of 
the Sabbath, going further or not so far, according to the ideas of the 
various legislatures. 

Here is a domain of the violation of the Sabbath. It is purely under 
the control of the national power so far as it relates to interstate com- 
merce, to the work of the Army and Navy in time of peace, the Post- 
Office Department of the Government, and also the general service of 
the Government. The States can not touch that domain. This practice 
has grown up in direct contradiction and violation of the traditions of 
the Anglo-Saxon communities, nations, and races, and in derogation 
and violation of the laws of all the States which made this Govern- 
ment, so that they are practically nullified to a great extent by the ac- 
tion of this superior Government which was created by their consent. 

The people of the United States, being the people of the several 
States, want to keej) their Sabbath. They did not understand that they 
were conceding to the General Government any right to destroy the 
Sabbath when they gave away the jurisdiction of civil power relating 
to interstate commerce, to the Post-Oflice, and no further than abso- 
lutely necessary in the control of the Army and the Navy. They did not 
understand that they were giving to the nation at large the right to 
violate that which they supposed they retained to themselves, and which 
within their special special jurisdictions they exercised among them- 
selves. 

Now, the question comes right to this point: God having ordained 
the Sabbath, as you concede with all religious organizations, here is 
the National Government, which alone can mak^ that law of God oper- 
ative in this sphere of national action. Why should not the National 
Government, then, re-enact that conceded law of the Almighty and 
make it effective ? 

Mr. Lewis. The Sabbath law differs entirely in its primary relation to 
man from the law against murder, in that the law against murder regu- 
lates a relation between men as men ; the law of the Sabbath primarily 
and fundamentally regulates a. relation between God and man. 

The Chairman.^ But are you not begging the question ? That is not 
meant offensively. Is it not the fact that this legislation is justified by 
reason of the relations of men to each other f 

Mr. Lewis. I was coming to that point. I believe (and therefore the 
answer that I made when it was said I gave myself away) that when 
science shall have demonstrated that a given practice is inimical to the 
highest interests of the commonwealth^(and in that I do not mean to 
the religious opinions of those who may differ from me, but to the highest 
interests of the commonwealth in the deep and scientific sense), Con- 
gress has a right to protect the commonwealth against any such inimi- 
cal work. 



SUNDAY EEST BILL. 67 

f 

The Chairman. Is not the fact that a particular thing is thus detri- 
mental to the interests of the commonwealth a demonstration that that 
thing is prohibited by the law of God, and, having a common origin, the 
will of God, as well as the just requirements of society for its own pres- 
ervation ? 

Mr. Lewis. True ; but the facts of history, as well as the philosophy 
of our relation to God, show that the benefits of the Sabbath can only 
come as a Sabbath from God downward, not from the civil law upward, 
and the intervention of the civil law in the case of the seventh day 
would do as it has done in the history of the first day, desabbatize it, or 
rather prevent it from being considered as a sacred day. Since the 
divine law alone is the standard of action and the ground of conscience 
in the matter of Sabbath, keeping, I insist that to talk of a civil Sabbath 
is a misnomer; but if careful investigation shall prove that the com- 
monwealth must protect itself against general injury by compelling men 
to rest (a thing which I did not even grant in my first reply, nor do I 
now), then the commonwealth is at liberty thus to do. 



ADDITIOIf AL EEMARKS BY EEV. BYEOH SUNDEELAHB, B. B. 

Mr. Sunderland. May I be allowed to make just one explanation ? 

The Chairman. Certainly. 

Mr. Sunderland. We have another engagement at half past 1, and 
I hope that the friends and the other gentlemen who are to address the 
committee will not regard it as an intentional disrespect to them if we 
now retire. 

I want to say before I go, and to give a parting shot to my friend 
Brother \Yolff, that his speech here to-day about ecclesiasticism would 
have done several centuries ago in the darkness of the Middle Ages, 
under the Urban s and the Gregories, but for such a speech to be deliv- 
ered at this time of day to American citizens, the sons of the fathers 
and founders of this Government, I am utterly surprised and astounded 
beyond expression. 



EEMAEKS BY PEOE. B. B. WILSON. 

Mr. Wilson. Mr. Chairman, will you allow me a few words? 

The Chairman. Certainly. Please state your relation to the sub- 
ject and whom you represent. 

Mr. Wilson. I am from Pittsburgh, Pa., and a member of the Sab- 
bath Union that has been in session in this city. 

I felt when the exception in the Constitution in favor of the Chief 
Executive was noted that there is great force in the argument and that 
the snme exemption might constitutionally be given to all whom the 
Government employs, for in one great sense the President is himself a 
servant. 

I wish also to note a fact which has been brought home to rae, that, 
by virtue of liis position as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Washing- 
toji issued an order with regard to the Sabbath; and when the great mass 
of uiien were called into the Army in the late war President Lincoln issued 
a simihir Sabbatli order. In 'those cases it was done by President 
Washington and President Lincoln in their capacity as Comm.anders-iu- 
chief. Now, in time of peace. Congress, acting in conjunction with the 
Executive, takes the place of the Commander-in-Chief, and it aippears 



68 SUNDAY BEST BILL. 

to me that it is in keeping with what the people recognized as so bene- 
ficial during the civil war that in time of peace the same authority should 
be exercised. 

I know the Sabbath order opened the way for Sabbath-keeping men 
to go into the Army, and enabled such a man to tell a superior officer 
who was exercising particular authority over him : 

The Commander-in-CMef requires you to give me as much of the Sunday for rest as 
the exigencies of the service will permit. 

In the same way I feel that the matter can be fairly brought forward 
now. I myself felt in the Army, and I have always felt, that the matter 
might be brought home in this way by the Congress and the Executive 
acting together, taking the place of authority, and saying to the em- 
ployes of the Government : 

you may have the rest that you conscientiously desire. 



EEMAESS BY JOHH NOBLE STEARUS. 

Secretary of the National Temperance Society. 

Mr. Stearns. Mr. Chairman, I did not come here to make an argu- 
ment. I desire simply to convey to you the hearty sympathy of our 
National Temperance Society with this bill and this movement. We 
are twenty-three years old. William E. Dodge was our first president. 
His successor is Dr. Theodore Cuyler. We have a vice-president in 
every State, and in every d&H of the country our members are in sym- 
pathy with this movement. 

1 never yet saw a man, woman, or child who worked on Sunday who 
did not want to rest instead. They said, " I wish I did not have to 
work." I have been in the summer to great summer-resorts like Ocean 
Grove, where half a million people go, and to Asbury Park and other 
places where there are no Sunday mails or Sunday trains, and a more 
quiet, peaceful, or better citizenship I never saw. 

1 will make but one other observation, namely, that I believe the 
despotism of the liquor traffic in compelling its members to violate the 
Sabbath is the greatest weakness in that traffic and will eventually be 
one of the greatest factors in its entire annihilation. 

The OnAiE-MAN. How does it compel its members to violate the Sab- 
bath ? 

Mr. Steaens. By discharging them if they do not work on Sunday. 
They have to work Sunday and at nights j they have to do continual 
work. 

The Chairman. How many do you think are engaged in the liquor 
traffic? 

Mr. Stearns. Probably 500,000 or 600,000 persons are directly con- 
nected with that traffic. 

The Chairman. And their families would be an addition to that 
number! 

Mi . Stearns. Their families would be an addition to the number. 

Ihe Chairman. The larger portion of them are single men ? 

Mr. Stearns. The larger portion are single, I should judge. I have 
not any special acquaintance with the men individually, except as I 
come in contact with their families in my mission work in the city of 
Brooklyn. 

The Chairman. Do you think any larger proportion of them are sin- 
gle persons than in the ordinary avocations of life I 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 69 

Mr. Stearns. I should think so. 

The Ohaikman. They are young men who would naturally become 
the heads of familiies. 

Mr. Steakns. Yes, sir; if they were not in that business. 

The Chairman. Its demoralization would be quite as severely felt 
by the community on that account ? 

Mr. Stearns. Yes, sir. I have had many of them say to me they 
wished to be out of the business and in something else where tliey might 
build up a character and position in society. I only refer to the Sunday 
work of these liquor men as an element of weakness in that traffic. 

After nearly forty years of business experience in New York City I 
believe that^jnen do more work and better work who work only six days 
than those who have to work every day iu the week. I think that the 
moral sense of the people is lowered by Sunday work. 

The Chairman. I suppose you have had as much observation as al- 
most any one else as to what the common people in this country think 
and believe and how they feel. What proportion of the common peo- 
ple of this country, and of all the people of this country, do you judge, 
believe that the Sabbath is of Divine ordination? 

Mr. Stearns. I should suppose that more than three-fourths. 

The Chairman. Including those who are and those who are not re- 
ligious, in the common sense of the term ^, 

Mr. Stearns. Yes, sir. I will give an instance that occurred yester- 
day. A man told me — 

I am not a church member ; I do not g;o to church, but I want you to say, any time 
you have an opportunity, that I hope the members of the church Avill triumph in 
this nation and in this Government. 

I sh>all not go into any further particulars, but that is the universal 
feeling. I have a mission Sunday-school, with nearly a thousand con- 
nected with it who do not go to church, but who are in poverty and 
trouble because of the Sunday work of many of their families in this 
liquor business. 

The Chairman. You do not then consider this necessarily a mere 
ecclesiastical or hierarchical church movement? 

Mr. Stearns. No, sir. 

The Chairman. To what extent is the movement supported by the 
American people ? 

Mr. Stearns. As an organized movement it is comparatively new. 

The Chairman. I refer to the support of the people. 

Mr. Stearns. The sentiment of the people, as I have seen it for thirty 
or forty years, is rising higher and higher in favor of absolute Sunday 
rest. 

The Chairman. Take the labor organizations and those whom we 
call the working people. That seems to draw a distinction betv/een 
work such as we are doing here to-day and that which a man does on a 
farm, but I would rather work on a farm than work here for that mat- 
ter. However, I mean now to confine the term to those who are at work 
iu the productive manual occupations. How generally do you think 
those people want a legalized Sabbath? 

Mr. Stearns. Very generally, and the sentiment is increasing in our 
locality. I live in a ward of 45,000, mostly working people, and that is 
their increasing opinion. 

The Chairman. A portion of those people desire this legislation from 
religious conviction, and another portion from a conviction that it is 
better for them in their earthly work and relations that there shall be 



70 SUNDAY BEST BILL. 

a Sabbath ; and some desire the Sabbath from both motives, m I un- 
derstand you? 

Mr. Stearns. What I was going to say is that they do not desire it 
so much for religious purposes as for their own strength and benefit and 
rest. 

The Chairman. All who desire it for religious purposes desire it for 
these other reasons also, and beyond those people there is a large mass 
of others who desire it. 

Mr. Stearns. There is a large and growing mass who desire it for 
their own benefit and protection and safety and strength. 



ADDITION AL EEIf ABKB BY MES. J. C. BATEHAM, 

MvB. Bateham. May I be permitted to give a little item of informa- 
tion on that point ? 

The Chairman. Certainly. I think such items will be as effective 
with legislators as any others, and if the facts alleged do not exist Con- 
gress will not trouble itself very much about legislation. 

Mrs. Bateham. As our women go about with these petitions among 
the laboring classes the report is almost universal that nearlj^ every wage- 
worker is with us. We hear no objection, and men and women al- 
most universally say, "It is just what we. want." I have had a great 
many to appeal to me personally, and others through other persons, 
saying, "Help us all you can 5 the laboring people are all with you." We 
have more than 240,000 of these wage-workers on our petitions and 
we can get all we have time to reach, I am satisfied, with the excep- 
tion of very small numbers, because we scarcely ever came across op- 
position. As we look on the petitions where the occupation is given, I 
have been astonished myself, because while we find ministers and other 
professional men, yet along down ia the list of signers are the butcher, 
the baker, and all classes of laborers running steadily right along every 
time. 

The Chairman. To what extent do you think these peiitious are signed 
by that class of people because the minister or any other individual may 
exert an influence over them ? 

Mrs. Bateham. Oh, it has no influence whatever. They do not know 
anything about any ministerial influence or any thing of that sort. Our 
women go right to 'them, pass from house to house, and right among the 
employes in some factory, and ask, "How many of you wish to sign this 
petition "P^ And when they Look at it they are ready to sign it. I never 
heard a woman sav, " I have been refused when I went into a fac- 
tory," or ^' When I went among the laborers the people refused to sign." 
They almost always sign when asked. 

TUe Chairman. Do you see any reason to think that this is an eccle- 
siastical movement? 

Mrs. Bateham. I am satisfied that it is not so at all. It is a move- 
ment ot the masses. I think the country is stirred at this time from 
one end to the other on this question, and the working people are as 
much stirred on it as any other class of people. 

The Chairman. There is a claim made by many that this is an eflbrt 
of the ministers to bring around a state of laws so that people can be 
compelled to go to church. 

Mrs. Bateham. The ministry, I may say, have had almost nothing to 
do with it. This petition work has been done chiefly by our Woman's 
Christain Temperance Union, It was started in behalf of the elevation 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 7l 

of the masses to protect the morality of the people. Of course we have 
had indorsements also from ministers and leading men. All the think- 
ers are with us, and the leaders of public opinion to a very large extent, 
but for the most part have gone right among the people. This is em- 
phatically a movement of the people, 

Tlie CnAiRjiAN. The ministers are obliged to give in ! 

Mrs. Bateham. Not exactly. They are always re^dy for this thing. 

The CiiAiEMAN. But they did not start it? 

Mrs. Bateham. They did not start it. They have at last established 
the American Sabbath IJnion, which is now in session in this city. 
This was organized a month ago. Before that the ministers, as organ- 
ized bodies, had done nothing except in some cases to indorse the peti- 
tions by votes of ecclesiastical assemblies. They have stood up for it, as 
we knew all ministers of the gospel would, but it has not been their 
work. 

The Chairman. They come limping along afterwards and now organ- 
ize. 

Mrs. Bateham. We claim that this is a sort of a wheelbarrow govern- 
ment anyway. The Government must be pushed by the people, and the 
ministers must sometimes be pushed by those who sit in the pews, 

The Chairman. Then you do not see in this movement any danger 
of ecclesiastical domination or of spiritual rule that will destroy our 
civil liberties? 

Mrs, Bateham. There is not the slightest ground whatsoever for that 
fear. 

The Chairman. Bo you suppose that ther^ are the names of any in- 
fidels on these petitions ? 

Mrs, Bateham. We have never asked the question, I could not tell 
you as to that. There might be infidels and there might be other un- 
believers. Wq never ask the question. We only say, '^Are you in favor 
of a law that will protect Sunday as a national rest day, which will 
stop this transportation by trains," etc., and they say, ^« Yes.^' 

The Chairman. What f)roportion of those to whom the petitions 
were preseuted have declined to sign? 

Mrs. Bateham. The proportion is very small. 

The Chairman. Do you think 1 person in 500 would refuse to sign ? 

Mrs. Bateham. No; I do not suppose so many would refuse. You 
see we do not always go to those who we know would oppose it. For 
instance, we would not go to a saloon man. We would know that on 
natural principles he would oppose it, 

The Chairman. To whom do you go ? 

Mrs. Bateham. We go to those whom we suppose from their occu- 
pation would not be opposed to it. There is a large class of people 
who make money from Sunday recreations. We know that the strength 
of the opposition comes from that class in one form and another, and 
we naturally would not go and ask them to indorse such a petition, be- 
cause it would be time wasted. 

The Chairman. With those exceptions, you go to all classes of peo- 
ple? 

Mrs. Bateham. Yes, sir. 

The Chairman. Do you go into factories? 

Mrs. BATEHAi\r. Oh, j^es. 

The Chairman. Do you go to railroad employes ? 

Mrs. Bateham. Certainly. We have hundreds of petitiona from 
them. I have received a letter since I came here to-day, which says 



72 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

that there are nearly 100,000 railroad men praying for the success of 
the bill. 

The Chairman. How about the farming people in the country ? 

Mrs. Bateham. They are always ready to sign our petitions. 

The .Chairman. How about the people in the flourishing villages and 
in the small cities ? 

Mrs. Bateham. We have always had good success among them. 
With more time, we could have roiled up a petition so large as to show 
that we carry the population with us. 

The Chairman. What opposition do you meet and what reasons do 
the opponents give ? 

Mrs. Bateham. We have never found any opposition. We have had 
persons who have privately said, '' I do not know that I approve the 
bill," but we have never known of any real opposition except from what 
we call the '^Saturdarians/' those who in one form and another prefer Sat- 
urday. Their jjapers stir them up to it, and they do oppose this move- 
ment. 

The Chairman. You have tried to guard against their opposition by 
this proposed amendment ^ 

Mrs. Bateham. Yes ; we believe in saving the rights of conscience, 
and we believe that where others oppose it from greed they are scarcely 
worthy of recognition by anybody. 

The Chairman. You donot think it interferes with the rights of con- 
science ? 

Mrs. Bateham. It does not. We should follow that which is best for 
the community, and which is the will of the community rather than the 
greed of a few ; but when it comes to conscientious scruples, we say 
they must be respected. Our Constitution guaranties that a man shall 
worship according to the dictates of his conscience. We believe that 
that principle must be respected, and that it can be respected, and yet 
at the same time allow society to have a uniform day of rest. 

The Chairman. How far would that unitprm day restrain a man any 
further than that he shall not disturb others ? 

Mrs. Bateham. For instance, he could not possibly hire another man 
to work for him, because that would be interfering with the other man's 
right to rest. He could not work in a way that would interfere with 
the public right to rest. He would have private rights. 

The Chairman. Subject to those limits he may practice his belief. 

Mrs. Bateham. Yes, sir. 

Mr. Stearns. I meant to emphasize the point, in the first i)lace, that 
I never saw a wage-worker or employe who was not in favor of this 
movement. 

I wish to say another thing, that for myself I find that for j)hysical 
recuperation I need one day in seven. I should have found that out 
had there been no divine law. 



EEMAEES BY C. E. EUHT. 

Mr. Hunt. I represent the Sabbath Association of Iowa. I wish to 
say that the association was recently formed . It was formed in October, 
and we have not yet gotten our petitions out over the State as we had 
desired before this sigoilicant time, but the people generally all over 
our State are very much interested in this movement. 

Ex-Railroad Commissioner Coffin gives the statement that there are 
25,000 railroad men in the State of Iowa who are kept from their Sab- 



I 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 73 

batli rest because of their employment by the railroad companies, and 
that there are some 75,000 in tbeii* families whose Sabbath rest is 
alio thus interfered with. As there are so many wage- workers all 
orer the United States who are thus kept from their Sabbath rest, 
I wish to make a little review of the grounds on which our friends who 
wish to have the seventh day observed object to any Sabbath law. 
They demand that all should be free to act in accordance with con- 
science. Take the 75,000 in Iowa, no less than 125,000 in Illinois, per- 
haps 100,000 in Indiana, 125,000 or 150,000 in Ohio, and so traverse the 
whole United States, and see what the number will be. Here our friends 
say they want all free to act in accordance with their conscience. 

The men who are working for railroads fear that as soon as they quit 
their railroad work they will be unable to support their families, because 
railroading is their business; the only work they are accustomed to. 
So we see at once if thej^ have a conscience against Sunday work and 
religious convictions against it, it is religious oppression to keep them 
in this employment. 

Yet those bodies of men who prefer the seventh day come here and 
cry out against all legislation, and say that we should not have a civil 
Sunday, because they do not agree with us as to that day. What are 
the relative numbers ? We can see at once that the wage- workers will 
outnumber them by a great majority. The only test is whether their 
religious convictions are worth more than those of the wage- workers. 
As to numbers ; as to religious liberty; as to religious convictions, the 
conclusion is at once in favor of the great majority who are oppressed 
by Sunday labor. 



ARGUMENT BY PROF. ALONZO T. JONES. 

The Chairman. You will have a full hour, professor. It is now 
half past 1. 

Mr. Jones. There are three particular lines in which I wish to conduct 
the argument : First, the principles upon which we stand ; secondly, the 
historical view, and then the practical aspect, coming down to this day 
and that which is going on. 

The principle upon which we stand is that civil government is civil 
and has nothing to do with religious observances in any way in the 
matter of legislation. The basis of that is found in the Avords of Jesus 
Christ, in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, twenty-first verse. 
When they asked whether it was lawful to give tribute to Csesar or not 
He replied : 

Render therefore unto Cscsar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things 
that are God's. 

In this the Savior certainly separated that which pertains to Csesar 
from that which pertains to God. We are not to render to Coesar that 
which pertains to Godj we are not to render to God by Caisar that 
which pertaius to God. 

The Chairman. May not the thing due to Caesar be due to God also? 

Mr. Jones. Ko, sir. If that be so, then the Savior did entangle Him- 
self in His talk — the very thing which they wanted Him to do. That is 
what it says, that they wanted to entangle Him in His talk. If He has 
drawn the distinctiou He iias between that which belongs to Ca3sar and 
that which belongs to God and there are those things which belong to 
both, then he did entangle Himself in His talk. 



74 SUNDAT KEST BILL. 

The Chairmatj. Is it not a requirement of God tbat we render to 
Csesar that whicli is due to Osesar f 
Mi. Jones. Yes. 

The GHAiiiMAisr If Osesar is society and the Sabbath is required for 
the good of society, does not God require us to establish the Sabbath 
for the good of society, and if society makes a law accordingly is it not 
binding 1 

Mr. Jones. It is the good of society to be Christian; it would be for 
the benefit of society. 

The Chairman. Do you not confuse this matter? A thing may be 
required for the good of society, and for that very reason be in accord- 
ance with the will and the command of God. God uses His command 
for the good of society, does He not I God does not give us commands 
that have no relation to the good of society. 

Mr. Jones. His commands are for the good of man. 
The Chairman. Man is society ; it is made up of individual men. 
Mr. Jones. But what He has issued to man for the good of men He 
has given those things which pertain solely to man's relationship to his 
God, and He has also given things which pertain to man's relationship 
to his fellow-men. Those things in which our duty pertains to our fel- 
low-men civil government can have something to do with, and yet not as 
a duty to God. 
The Chairman. Man would obey God in obeying civil society ? 
Mr. Jones. All right ; I will eome to that point. As to those things 
which pertain to our duty to God, society has nothing to do with the 
individual's right of exercising before God. In the formation of civil 
society you know there are certain rights surrendered to society by the 
individual, without which society could not be organized. 

The Chairman. That is not conceded. When was this doctrine of a 
compact in society made ? It is the philosophy of an infidel. 

Mr. Jones, It is made wherever you find men thrown together, I care 
not how. 

The Chairman, Did you and I ever agree to it ■? Did it bind us be- 
fore we were compos mentis 1 

Mr. Jones. Certainly; civil government is an ordinance of God. 
The Chairman. Then it is not an agreement of man, necessarily. 
Mr. Jones, Yes, sir ; it springs Irom the people. 
The Chairman. As to the compact of society, that is talked about; 
it is not conceded, you know, that it is a matter of personal and indi- 
vidual agreement. Society exists altogether independent of the^ voli- 
tion of those who enter into it. However, I shall not interrupt you 
further. I only did this because of our private conversation, in which 
I thought that you labored under a fallacy in your fundamental prop- 
osition that would lead all the way through your argument. I sug- 
gested that ground, and that is all, 

Mr. Jones. I think the statement of the Declaration of Independr 
ence is true, which says that "governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed." 
• The Chairman. I do not controvert that. 

Mr. Jones. That is the theory of civil government upon which we 
stand. 

The Chairman, But society is behind the government which society 
creates. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. AH civil government springs fi^om the people, 
I care not in what form it is. 
The Chairman, That is all agreed to. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 75 

Mr. JcNES, But tlie people, I care not how many they are, have no 
right tc invade your relationship to God nor mine. That rests between 
me and God through faith in Jesus Christ, and as the Saviour has made 
this distinction between that which pertains to Oiesar and that which 
is God's, when Ciesar invades the realm of that which pertains to God 
then Ciesar is out of his place, and in so far as Ofesar is put there God 
is denied, because in that place if God is denied then Ocesar is put in 
the place of God, and there is a usurpation of powers by Oiiesar that do 
not belong to him. 

This argument is confirmed by the Lord's own commentary upon 
that text' in Eomans xiii, first to tenth verses. There the apostle is 
writing of this same thing, and it will confirm the statement I have 
made. I come now to the commandment which these people want to 
enforce : 

Remember tlio Sabbatli day to keex) it Jioly. 

At least they want to make whatever term they choose to speak of it. 

Let every soul be subject unto tbo higher powers. For there is no power but of 
God : the jjowers that be are ordained of God. 

Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they 
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 

Then the apostle speaks the other words about how the civil gov- 
ernment of society bears the sword not in vain. Then we come to the 
sixth verse : 

For, for this cause pay ye tribute also. 

In the seventh verse he says : 

Render therefore to all their dues ; tribute to whom triluTte is due. 

It is plain to be seen that those words of the apostles were written 
with direct reference to the words of Christ in regard to tribute. Shall 
we render tribute ; and, if so, to whom ? To Coesar. We do not render 
tribute to God j we render worship to Him. We need not pay taxes to 
Him. But here the apostle is writing of that same subject of tribute, 
that which we owe to the powers that be, and he says : 

Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to 
whom custom ; fear to whom fear ; honor to whom honor. 

Owe no man auy thing, but to love one another : for he that loveth another hath ful- 
filled the law. 

For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shait not kill, Thou shalt not steal, 
Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other 
commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely. Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. 

The apostle of Jesus Christ knew full well that there are other com- 
mandments besides those which he quoted. He knew tbat there are 
commandments of that same law, the Decalogue from which he quoted; 
but yet he quotes certain ones and says : 

If thero bo any other commandmeut, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, 
namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 

Why is it that he, knowing of the first four commandments of that 
hiw from which he quoted, that tliou shalt have no other Gods, that 
thou shalt not make any graven image, thou shalt not take the name 
of tl'.e Lord thy God in vain, and remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy, becau.se it is the Sabl- li of the Lord, and knowing of the one 
great commandment which says, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and all thy soul,*aud all thy miad and strength, yet when 



76 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

he quotes five of the ten he says, if there be any other one it is compre* 
hended in this, love your neighbor as yourself? 

Why did he leave out the first four commandments and the great one, 
when he knew full well that they are there, when he says if there be 
any other commandment, it is comprehended in love your neighbor as 
yourself? 

Why did he do it ? For tliis reason : He is writing of that which we 
owe to the powers that be. He is writing of that which we are to render 
to Gsesar ; and therefore in writing of that which was rendered to Caesar, 
and whicli we owe to the powers that be, the Lord himself has lett out 
the first four commandments of His own law. 

Therefore, whenever any civil government attempts to enforce any- 
thing in regard to any one of the first four commandments it invades 
the prerogative of God and is to be disobeyed (I do not say resisted, 
but disobeyed) ; and as the Lord has left out of the account these com- 
mandments in His own command upon the principle which Christ es- 
tablished, so we deny forever the right of any civil government to legis- 
late in anything that pertains to God. This Sunday bill does propose 
to legislate in regard to the Lord's Day. If it is the Lord's Day we are 
to render it to the Lord, not to Caesar. When Caesar exacts it of us 
he is exacting what does not belong to him, and is demanding of us 
that with which he has nothing at all to do. 

The Chairman. Would it answer your objection in that regard if, 
instead of saying '* the Lord's Day," we should say " Sunday ? " 

Mr. Jones. No, sir ; because the underlying principle of Sunday is 
ecclesiastical, and it is ecclesiastical legislation. I will come to the 
question you ask presently, and we shall see how it runs. 

Now, do not misunderstand us on this point. We are Seventh-Day 
Adventists, but if this bill were in favor of enforcing the seventh day 
as the Lord's Day we would oppose it just as much as we oppose it as it 
is now, for the reason that civil government has nothing to do with what 
we owe to God, or whether we owe it at all or not, or whether we pay 
it or not. 

The Chairman. You oppose all the Sun day laws of the country, 
then ? 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir. 

The Chairman. You are against all Sunday laws? 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir ; we are against every Sunday law that was ever 
made in this world from the first enacted by Constant ine to this one now 
i)roposed. 

The Chairman. State and national alike? 

Mr. Jones. State and national, sir. I shall give you historical rea- 
sons presently, and the facts upon which these things stand, and I hope 
they will receive some consideration. 

George Washington, 1 believe, is given some weight, at least by the 
Seventh-Day Adventists, and he said every man who conducts himself 
as a good citizen is accountable alone to God for his religious faith, and 
is to be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his own 
conscience, and so should we be protected so long as we pay our taxes, 
so long as we are law-abiding citizens, and you will find none more law- 
abiding in the TJnited States than the denomination to which I belong. 
There are no saloon keepers among them. They are not found in the 
courts of law in litigation with their neighbors, or anything of that 
kind. You will find no people in this country or in the world more 
peaceable and law-abiding than they. We teach them that one of the 
highest duties of the Christian citizen is to obey the law and pay taxes. 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 77 

The Chairman. That is the common Mormon argument. The Mor- 
moDs say their institution is a matter of religious belief. Everybody 
COD cedes their right to believe in Mormonism, but when they come to 
the point of practicing it, will it not be to the disturbance of others "? 

Mr. Jones. I shall come to that point, and I should have come to it 
ifyouhadnot asked the question. We have stated that it is contrary 
to Scripture, contrary to the principle of Christ, to have the civil gov- 
ernment legislate in anything that pertains to God. It is every man's 
right in this country, and anywhere else, to worship an idol if he chooses. 
Fallen man says that his God is what he thinks he is. That is the only 
way he can worship. He can only worship what he thinks. That is the 
God whom he worships. I do not care what shape it is or what form it 
is, and he has the right to worship that God anywhere in all the wide 
world. But suppose in the worship of that God he attempts to take 
the life of one of his fellow-men and offer it as a human sacrifice? The 
civil government exists for the protection of life, liberty, property, etc. 
The civil law protects the man's life from the exercise of that man's re- 
ligion, but in legislating it does not legislate in regard to his religion; 
it legislates in regard to the protection of the citizens whom it is made 
to protect, and for whose protection it exists. That is what the civil 
law is for. 

Again, there are people who believe in community of property" in this 
world. Suppose they base their principles upon the apostolic example 
that they had all things in common. Very good; they have the right 
to do that if they want to. Every one who sells his property and comes 
and puts it into a common fund has a right to do that if he wants to. 
Every one who submits to that has a right to do it. But suppose these 
men, in carrying out that principle and in claiming that it is a religious 
ordinance and according to the will of God, were to take your property 
or mine in their community, and they go and take it witnout your hav- 
ing given your consent to it, then what ? The State forbids it. It does 
not forbid the exercise of their religion, but it protects your property 
and mine. 

Therefore it is true (and you, or anybody else, may think of it as long 
as you please), the State in its legislation can never legislate properly 
in regard to any man's religious faith, or in relation to anything in the 
first four commandments of the Decalogue; but if in the exercise of his 
religious convictions under the first four commandments he invades the 
rights of his neighbor, then the civil government says that is unlawful. 
Why ^t Because it is irreligious or because it is immoral 1 Not at all; 
but because it is uncivil, and for that reason only. 

The Chairman. Now apply that right to this case. 

Mr. Jones. Yes; to Mormondom. 

The Chairman. jSTo ; to the institution of the Sabbath among men 
for the good of men. 

Mr. Jones. Let us look at that point. Here are persons who are 
keeping Sunday, we will say. It is their right to work on every other 
day of the week but that. It is their right to work on that day if they 
want to. They are keeping that day. It is the Sabbath; they recog- 
nize it as Sabbath. Very good. Now, then, when they are doing that 
all right, here are other people who are keeping Saturday, or we will 
say Friday. The IMohammedan recognizes Friday. Here are other 
people who keep Saturday, the seventh day, as the Sabbath. Those 
who keep Sunday, and who want legislation for that day, ask that 
other people shall be forbidden to work on Sunday because it disturbs 



78 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

their rest; it disturbs their worshix), etc., and they claim that their 
rights are not properly protected. 

Do they really believe that in principle? Let us see. They will 
never admit — at any rate I have never yet found one of them who 
would admit — that their work on Saturday disturbs the rest or the wor- 
ship of the man who rests on Saturday. If their work on Saturday 
does not disturb the Sabbath rest of the man who keeps Saturday, 
then upon what principle is it that our work on Sunday disturbs their 
rest because they keep Sunday? I have never found one on that side 
yet who would admit the principle. If their work does not disturb our 
rest and our worship, our work can not disturb their rest or their wor- 
ship. 

More than this, in a Sunday convention held in California, in which 
I was present, there was a person who spoke on this very question, 
Said he, " There are some people, and a good many of them, in this 
State who do not believe in Sunday laws, and they keep Saturday as 
the Sabbath. But," said he, "the majority must rule. The vast 
majority of the people do keep Sunday, and their methods must be re- 
spected, and they have a right to enact it into a law." I rose and said, 
" Suppose the seventh-day people were in the majority, and they should 
go to the legislature and ask for a law to compel you to keep Saturday, 
out of respect to their rights, would you consider it right*?" There 
was a murmur all over the house, " No." 

The Chairman. Upon what ground did they say "no?" 

Mr. Jones. That is what I should like to know. There is no ground 
logically except the claim that the majority has the right to rule in 
matters of conscience. 

The Chairman. That does not follow ; at least it does not strike me 
that it follows. The majority has a right to rule in what partains to 
the regulation of society, and if Caesar regulates society, then the ma- 
jority has a right in this country to say what shall be rendered to 
Csesar. 

Mr. Jones. If nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every thou- 
sand in the United States kept the seventh day, that is Saturday, and 
I deemed it my choice and right to keep Sunday, I would insist on it, 
and they would have no right to compel me to rest on Saturday. 

The Chairman. In other words, you take the ground that for the 
good of society, irrespective of the religious aspect of the question, so- 
ciety may not require abstinence from labor on the Sabbath if it dis- 
turbs others? 

Mr. Jones. No, sir. 

The Chairman. You are logical all the way through that there shall 
be no Sabbath. This question was passed to me to ask : Is the speaker 
also opposed to all laws against blasphemy? 

Mr, Jones. Yes, sir ; not because blasphemy is not wrong, but be- 
cause the civil government can not define blasphemy nor punish it. 
Blasphemy pertains to God j it is an ofitense against Him j it is a sin 
against Him. 

The Chairman. Suppose the practice of it in society at large is hurt- 
ful to society ? 

Mr. Jones. That will have to be explained. How is it hurtful to so- 
ciety ? 

The Chairman. Suppose it be hurtful to society in this way, that a 
belief in the existence of God and reverence for the Creator and the 
cultivation of that sentiment in society is for the good of society, in fact, 
the basis of all law and restraint. If the Almighty, who knows every 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 79 

thing, or is supposed to know, and has all power, has no right to re- 
strain us, it is difficult to see how we can restrain each other. 

Mr. Jones. He has the right to restrain us. He does restrain us. 

The Chairman. To commonly blaspheme and deride and ridicule the 
Almighty would of course have a tendency to bring up the children 
who are soon to be the state in an absolute disregard of Him and His 
authority. Blasphemy, as I understand it, is that practice which brings 
the Creator into contempt and ridicule among His creatures. 

Mr. Jones. What is blasphemy here would not be blasphemy at all 
in China. 

The Chairman. We are not dealing with the pagan community. A 
regulation that may be appropriate in a pagan community would not 
answer men in a Christian community. Do you mean to say that there 
is no such thing as blasphemy? 

Mr. Jones. Oh, no; not at all. 

The Chairman. The Chinaman hardly believes in any God whatever; 
at least in no such God as we do. Taking our God and these Christian 
institutions of ours, what do you understand blasphemy to be ? 

Mr. Jones. There are a good many things that the Scripture shows 
to be blasphemy. 

The Chairman. The power of the law has undertaken in various 
States to say that certain things are blasphemy. 

Mr. Jones. Precisely ; but if the law is going to define blasphemy and 
punish it, why does it not go to the depths of it and define all and punish 
all? 

The Chairman. Perhaps it may not go as far as it ought. You say 
you are against all laws against blasphemy, cursing, and swearing ? 

Mr. Jones. In relation to any one of the four first commandments. 

Senator Palmer. Suppose that what is defined as blasphemy in the 
statutes of the several States should detract from the observance of the 
law and regard for it, would you regard laws against it as being im- 
proper '? 

Mr. Jones. Under the principle that the Scripture lays down no leg- 
islation in any way can be proper in regard to the first four Command- 
ments. There may be many ways in which it would appear very nice 
and very appropriate for civil government to do this or to do that, but 
when you have gone over tbe line where will you stop? 

Senator Palmer. Abstaining from blasphemy is a part of the educa- 
tion of the youth of the country. 

Mr. Jones. That is true. If youth are properly educated they will 
never blaspheme. 

Senator Palmer. We pass laws for the education of the youth. The 
question is whether abstention from blasphemy could not be included 
in the scope of education. Take it on that ground. 

Mr. Jones. Idolatry (and covetousness is idolatry) is no more than a 
violation of the first Commandment — 

Thou shall have no other gods before mc. 

The Chairman. Covetousness is a state of mind, but when covetous- 
ness becomes practice by stealing, taking from another without consid- 
eration, the law interferes. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. 

Senator Palmer. There is an infection in blasphemy or in covetous- 
ness. For instance, if one covetous man in a neighborhood should in- 
fuse the whole neighborhood with covetousness to such an extent that 



80 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

all would become thieves, then covetousness would be a proper subject 
of legislation. 

Mr. Jones. Never. You forbid the theft, not the covetousness. You 
can not invade the condition of mind which is covetousness. 

The Chairman. We do not say that we must invade the condition of 
mind; but society has a right to make regulations, because those regu- 
lations are essential to the good of society. Society, by a major vote, 
establishes a regulation, and we have to obey what is settled by the 
majority. 

Mr. Jones. In regard to the I^ew England theocracy, our historian 
Bancroft said that jast simply for the sentiment they punished (stating 
how and to what extent) blasphemy, or whatever a jury of twelve men 
should consider to be blasphemy. 

The Chairman. But the law was behind the jury and said that the 
practice should be punished. If a jury of twelve men said that one bad 
committed the overt act, then it could be punished. , It was the majority 
who made the law, and the jury only found the question of fact after the 
law had been violated. The jury did not make the law. This before us 
is a question as to making a law. 

Mr. Jones, When Paul spoke, and wherever he spoke in the Koman 
Empire, he was blaspheming according to the law, and he was held as 
a blasphemer and as an atheist, and was put to death under that very 
principle. 

The Chairman. The law was wrong, you say ? 

Mr. Jones. Certainly, the law was wrong. The Roman law was that 
no man should have particular gods of his own. 

The Chairman. That law was not for the good of society ? 

Mr. Jones. No, sir. 

The Chairman. Certainly it was not ; then you have to repeal the 
law or obey it ? 

Mr. Jones. It ought to be repealed. 

The Chairman. During these eighteen hundred years we have con- 
trived to repeal that law ; but here comes an intelligent people who 
have evolved among themselves, as the result of a thousand or fifteen 
hundred years of history, among other things, the institution of the 
Christian Sabbath which is written into the laws of every State in this 
country, so that the whole American people, made up of communities 
or States, have enacted the principle of this law. 

Mr. Jones. The same principle is under the bill before the committee. 
There is the same principle under it ail. If you can legislate in regard 
to the Sabbath, you can legislate in regard to blasphemy, you can leg- 
islate in regard to idolatry. 

The Chairman. You deny the right of the majority, in other words, 
to make a law in conformity with which the whole shall practice in 
society ? 

Mr. Jones. I deny the right of any civil government to make any 
law respecting anything that pertains to man's relationship to his God 
under the first four of the Ten Commandments. 

The Chairman. Then you assume that this bill and all Sunday laws 
concern only the relation of man to God and not the relation of men to 
each other I 

Mr. Jones. That is the principle by which other things come in. 

The Chairman. Right thers I found fault with your original propo- 
sition. You have got to establish before you can defeat the ground of 
Sunday laws, tliat Sunday laws are not for the good of Oiesar, that is, 
not for the good of society. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 81 

Mr. Jones. I liave not had time to prove that yet. I will prove fully 
that Sunday laws are not ibr the good of anybody. 

The Chairman. Come to the point as soon as yon can. That is the 
point in this case as between you and the law proposed to be enacted. 

Mr. Jones. As I was saying, and I want to come to that point in the 
line which I had laid out, when the Christians went into the Eoman 
Empire worshipping God throni:?h Jesns Christ every man who profes^^ed 
the name of Christ made himself a traitor to the Eoman Empire. The 
l\oman Empire had also a hivr not only that no man should have par- 
ticular gods of his own, but that whoever introduced a new religion 
should be put to death if of the lower ranks. That was the law. 

The Christians did have a particular God of their own, not recognized 
by the Eoman law. They did introduce ii new religion. The Koman 
Empire enforced the law, and that is why the Christians were put to 
death. If things pertaining to God be a proper subject of legislation 
by civil government, then no Christian was ever persecuted, and there 
never has been persecution in this world. All that the Eoman Empire 
did in killing the Christians was to enforce the law. 

Then the question was with the Christians at that time, and the ques- 
tion is with us. Was not the law wrong, and did not the Christians have 
the right to attack the law? That is ali they did. When a Oiristian 
was brought before the magistrate and asked whether he had a partic- 
ular God of his own, he answered, '* Yes." 

Q. Did you not kno^ that the law Tvao against it ? — A. Yes, 

Q. Have you not inlroducod a new roli_t!;iou ? — A. Yes. 

Q. Did you not know the lavr was against it ?— A. Yes. 

Q. Did you not know that the x^enalty was death if of the lower ranks?— A. Yc3. 

Q. You aro of the h^wer ranks? — A. Yes. 

Q. You have intro<l'.iced a new religion ? — A. Yes. 

Q. You have a God of your own ? — A. Yes. 

Q. What is the penalty ?— A. Death. 

That is all; the Romans only enforced the law upon the Christians 
in the tirst ages of Christianity, and there was no persecution in it 
if the principle be recognized that civil government has a right to 
legislate in religious things; they were only enforcing the law. ' That 
is all the Eoman emperors did irom that time of Constantine or any 
other time. All the papacy did in the Middle Ages was to have the 
emperors enforce the law. We come just to the point where the Chris- 
tians were at that time. We come to the root of the whole matter and 
deny the right of the civil government to legislate on anything that 
pertains to our duties to God under the first four commandments. 

The CnAiRiiAN. Do you understand that this bill undertakes to make 
anybody worship Godi 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir ; I do say that, and I will prove it by facts from 
that side themselves. ]Srow, I will take the second point, the liistorical 
part of this very thing, and I want you all to see that in this precise 
way the Papacy was made in t!ie fourth century. I shall read all that 
I do read perhaps from Keander's Church History, second volume. Pro- 
fessor Torrey's edition, Boston, 1852. There are other editions in which 
the pages differ a little from this one, and I can only refer to it by the 
page. It is in sections and then subsections all the Avay through. It is 
not chaptered, so that I can not give any more delinite references. 

The principle that the Christians asserted was to render to Caisar that 
which is Csesar's, and to deny the riglit of Cresar to demand anything 
that pertained to God. They gave tlieir lives in support of that prin- 
ciple against the law of the Eoman En^pire and against the very exist- 
ence of the Eoman Empire. But this principle was carried ou until it 
S. Mis. 43 G 



82 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

forced the Roman Empire with all its power to recognize the right of 
every man to have particular gods of his own. 

The Koman Empire did come in the days of Constantino and Lycin- 
ias to that fact at the death of Galerius, and it was decreed in the Bo- 
man law that every man should be at liberty to have whatever god he 
pleased and worship him as he pleased. But it was the Christian prin- 
ciple that forced the Eoman Empire to that point in the face of the 
Eoman law, which they opposed when Christ first started His doctrine 
in the world. 

It is the Christian doctrine that civil government has nothing at all 
to do with religious things under the first four commandments. The 
Christians asserted that, and they brought the Roman Empire to that 
point where it was forced to recognize, just as every national constitu- 
tion does now, that the civil government shall have nothing to do with 
religion, but leave that to every man's conscience and his God. As 
long as he is a good citizen they will protect him, and he has a right to 
worship Whom he pleases and when he pleases and as he pleases. 
When brought to that point it only trembled in the balance for a little 
while, and then the Papacy, with that ambitious spirit that developed 
the Papacy, took up the strain, and took up that line of work which 
ended in the imperious despotism of the Middle Ages. I want you to 
see just how that was done, and you will have no difficulty then in see- 
ing the secret of this movement. 

I read first from page 132 of volume 2 of Neander's Church History. 
Keander says: . ' 

There had in fact arisen in tlie churcli * * * a false theocratical * * «, ground- 
ing itself on the idea of a visible priesthood belonging to the essence of the church 
and governing the church, brought along with it an unchristian opposition of the 
spiritual to the secular power, and which might easily result in the formation of a 
sacerdotal state, subordinating the secular to itself in a false and outward way. 
{Neander's Church History, vol. 2, ;^ag6 132.) 

Then it was a theocratic theory of government that was the prevail- 
ing one. Neander says in the next paragraph : 

This theocratical theory was also the prevailing one in the time of Constantine. 

Out of that theocratic theory of government the Papacy grew, which 
did subordinate the civil to the ecclesiastical power, and that same spirit 
is to be guarded against to-day in the United States as much as iii any 
other country. 

I wish to put aloiigside of this the parallel as we gO. I want you to 
see that there is a theocratical theory underlying this whole thing. 
Mrs. Bateham has said that the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
started this movement a little while ago. and they have worked it out. 
What is their aim in civil government? ' I read from the monthly read- 
log of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of September, 1886, a 
monthly reading read in all the local unions throughout the country, 
the following : 

A true theocracy is yet to come j * * * hence I pray devoutly, as a 

Christian patriot, for the ballot in the hands of women, and rejoice that the Na- 
tional Woman's Christian Temperance Union has so long championed this cause;— - 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union Monthly Beading for Se})teml)€r, 1886. 

A theocratical theory again is coming in to interfere in civil things, to 
establish a theocracy, and to subordinate the civil at the last to the 
ecclesiastical. 

The Chairman. Do you think that the question of giving the balMt 
to women is a religious question ? ^ 

Mr. Jones. Noj I only read this foi^ the purpose of giving the proof 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 83 

that there is a theocratical theory coming in as there was then, so as to 
show the parallel. 

The ChairmAjN". But the parallel seems to imply that the extension 
Of the snfirage to T^'Oman is by divine appointment, and is the introduc- 
tion ota theocratic form of government? 

i\Ir. Jones. Yes, they want the ballot so as to make theocracy suc- 
cessful. 

The OnAiBMAN. Therefore, you would be against woman suffrage ? 

Mr: Jones. I would be against woman suffrage or any other kind of 
suffrage to establish a theocracy. 

The Chairman. But that is not the question. It is possible these 
women have misstated their own idea there. 

Mr. Jones. Ko, because I have other proofs. Let me read them. 

Senator Palmer. Do you suppose they intended there a practical 
theocracy? 

Mr. Jones. Let me read ftlrther and you will get their own words. 

The Chairman. If these women are trying to overthrow the institu- 
tions of the country and are about to establish a sacerdotal state We 
ought to know it. 

Mr. Jones. That is it, and that is why I am showing here. We want 
the nation to know it. 

The Chairman. These women need looking after, I admit. 

Mr. Jones. They do in that respect, and there are many men COh- 
cerned in the same business. 

The Chairman. Otherwise it would not be dangerous? 

Mr. Jones. It would be dangerous anyway. A theocratical theory 
of government is dangerous anywhere. Itis anti-Christian 5 it is con- 
trary to right and the principles of justice. 

The Chairman. Do you not suppose that the government of heaven 
is a theocracy ? 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir ; but a civil government is not. 

The Chairman. Then why is it dangerous ? 

Mr. Jones. Governments of earth are not dangerous when properly 
controlled 

The Chairman. They only say that the true theocracy is yet to come. 
A millennium is supposed to be coming. Perhaps they have reference 
to the millennium that We have not yet got, so that they must wait 
some years before they get it. 

Mr. Jones. But I am going to read what kind of laws they propose 
to make to bring in the millennium. 

The Chairman. So for as you have read you have not touched the 
question, for they say " a true theocracy is yet to come," and it may bo 
they are looking to the coming down of the new Jerusalem for the time 
of the ne\v theocracy. 

Mr. Jones. Ko, because no true theocracy can ever come through 
civil laws, or through i)olitics, or through the ballot. 

The Chairman. That is not sure at all. 

Mr. Jones. It is by the Scriptures. 

The Chairman. I do not know; I have read the Bible severaltimes. 
But go on. 

Mr. Jones. Another statement is the following: 

The Woman'!^ Chrietim Temperance Union, local, state, national, and vrorld-Tvide, 
has one vital, organic thoup;lit, one all-absorbing purpose, one undying entlinsiasra, 
and that is, that Christ shall be this world's king. Voa, verily, this world's king — -^ 

The Chairman. '- Shall be?" 



84 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

Mr. Jones. <^ Shall be this world^s king.'' 

The Chairman. But you are a clergyman , and you read the Blbie 
to us. 

Mr. Jones. I am going to read a passage presently right on this 
point. 

The Chaiuivian. It is not the same Bible, if the time when Christ is 
to be king is the present. 

Mr. Jones. I am going to read a passage from the Bible in connection 
with this subject. 

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, local, state, national, and world-wide, 
has one vital, organic thonght, one all-absorbing purpose, one undying enthusiasm, 
and that is, that Christ shall be this world's king. Yea, -verily, this world's king in 
its realm of cause and effect; king of its courts, its camps, its commerce ; king of its 
colleges and cloisters ; king of its customs and its constitutions. 

That emphasizes this world's king. Jesus Christ himself said, "My 
kingdom is not of this world." Then, assuredly, the Woman's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union stands flatly against the word of Jesus Christ, 
and saying that that kingdom is to enter the realm of the law through 
the gate-way of politics. Jesus Christ has His entrance through the 
gate-way of the gospel and not through politics. 

JlsTeander says, as I was reading, on page 132 of this volume : 

This theocratical theory was already the prevailing one in the time of Constan'tine ; 
and * * * the bishops voluntarily made themselves dependent on him by their 
disputes and by their determination to make use of the power of the state for the 
furtherance of their own aims. {Id., p. 132. ) 

' What, then, were their aims ? Their first and greatest aim was the 
exaltation of themselves ; and second only to that was the exaltation of 
Sunday. These two things had been their principal aims, and especially 
of the bishops of Eome, for more than a hundred years, when Constan- 
tine gave them a chance to make their aims effectual by the power of 
the state. The first assertion of the arrogant pretensions of the bishop 
of Bome to power over the whole church was made in behalf of Sunday 
by Yictor, who was bishop of Rome from A. D. 193 to 202. 

He wrote an imperious letter to the Asiatic prelates, commanding them to imi- 
tate the example of the Western Christians with respect to the time of celebrating 
Easter (that is, commanding them to celebrate it always on Sunday). The Asiatics 
answered this lordly requisition * * * with great spirit and resolution, that they 
would by no means depart, in this manner, from the custom handed down to them by 
their ancestors. Upon this the thunder of excommunication began to roar. Victor, 
exasperated by this resolute answer of the Asiatic bishops, broke communion with 
them, pronounced them unworthy of the name of his brethren, and excluded them 
from all fellowship with the Church of Rome. (Mosheim, Church History, Second 
Century, Part 11^ Chapter V, par. 11.) 

The one means by which these church managers secured from Con- 
stantine the use of the power of the state was the famous edict prohib- 
iting certain kinds of work on ^Hhe venerable day of the sun." That 
edict runs thus: 

Let all the judges and towns-people and the occupation of all trades rest on the 
venerable day of the sun, but let those who are situated in the country freely and at 
full liberty attend to the business of agriculture, because it often happens that no 
other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines, lest the critical moment being 
let slip men should lose the commodities granted by Heaven. 

This edict was issued March 7, A. D. 321. It will be seen by this 
edict that only judges and towns-people and mechanics were commanded 
to rest on Sunday. If mechanics were allowed to work the spir^ual 
temple could not be built "without the noise of the hammer j" don't you 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 85 

see ? But this did not satisfy the political managers of the churches for 
any great length of time. 

By a law of the year 3SG those older changds effected by the Emperor Constantino 
were more rigorously enforced, and, in general, civil transactions of every kind on 
Sunday were strictly forbidden. Whoever transgressed was to he considered, in fact, 
as guilty of sacrilege. (Neander, Id., p. 300.) 

But these laws only prohibited work on Sunday; pleasure-seeking, 
games, etc., were not; even yet prohibited. Consequently a church con- 
vention held at Carthage in 401 — 

Resolved to petition the Emperor that the public shows might be transferred from 
the Christian Sunday and from feast days to some other days of the week. (I&.) 

And the sole reason given by that convention was : " Because the 
people gather more to the circus than to the church." 

But what was the purpose of all these Sunday laws and petitions foi 
Sunday laws '? From the first Sunday law enacted by Constantine to 
the last one enacted by auy other emperor ; from the first petition pre- 
sented by the political bishops of the fourth century to this last one 
circulated by the political preachers of the United States; the sole 
reason and purpose has always been — 

So that the day might be devoted with less interruption to the purposes of devo- 
tion, and in order that the devotion of the faithful might be free from from all dis- 
turbance. Id. , pp. 297, 301. 

But what was it that disturbed the devotion of the faithful on Sun- 
days in the fourth century ? 

Owing to the prevailing passion at that time, especially in the large cities, to run 
after the various public shows, it so happened that Avhen those spectacles fell on the 
same days which had been consecrated by the church to some religious festival, they 
proved a great hindrance to the devotion of Christians, though chiefly, it must be al- 
lowed, to those whose Christianity was the leasts an affair of the life and of the heart. 
Id., p. 300. 

But, again, how could a theater or a circus in one part of the city 
hinder the devotion of the faithful in another, and perhaps distant, part 
of the city, or even in the country? Thus : 

Church teachers * * * were, in truth, often forced to complain that in such 
competitions the theater was vastly more frequented than the church. lb. k. 

That is the secret of the hindrance to their devotion. If there was a 
circus or a public show on Sunday, it would get a great many specta- 
tors, and '* so break up a great many congregations f the church-mem- 
bers would go to the circus, and ** let the hour of worship go by un- 
heeded ;" and so their devotion was greatly disturbed and hindered. 

But yet those ambitious prelates of the fourth century were not con- 
tent with stopping all manner of work and closiug public places on 
Sunday. They had secured the power of the state so far, and they de- 
termined to carry it yet further, and use the i)ower of the state to com- 
pel everybody to worship according to the dictates of the church. And 
one of the greatest fathers of the church was father to this theory. 
That was the great church father and Catholic saint, Augustine, and, 
by the way, he is grandfather to national reform, too, as we shall prove 
one of these days. Augustine taught that — 

It is indeed better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction tnan 
by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means are better, the 
latter must not therefore be neglected. * » * Many must often be brought back 
to their Lord, like wicked servantB, by the rod of temporal nuffering, before they at- 
tain to the highest grade of religious development. zSchaff, Church History, Vol. 11, 
«ec(w« 27. , 



86 SUNDAY BEST BILL. 

And says liTeander : 

It was by Augustine, then, that a theory was proposed and founded, which * * » 
coutained the germ of that whole systeni of spiritual despotism, of intolerance and per- 
pacution, which ended in the trihunals of the Inquisition. Neander,Id., p. 217. 

Of tliat whole fourtli century Simday-law movement, from begin- 
ning to end, Neander, with direct reference to those Sunday laws, 

says: 

In this way the church received help from the state, for the fartherajice of her 
ends. Id., p. 301. 

That is the indisputable truth of the matter. And it is just as in- 
disputably true that this Sunday -law movement in our day in this nation, 
is only another attempt of the church to seize upon the power of the 
state and use it to further her own aims. And just as surely as these 
XDolitical i)reachers of our day secure the power and the recognition of 
the state in their first step, they will carry it to the last step, and the 
logical end to which it was carried in the fourth centaiy, and afterward 
in the working of the theory of Augustine. 

The church of onr day can no more safely be trusted with political 
power than could that of the fourth century, or of any other century. 
The only safety for the people, and the only security for the state, is 
to make it perfectly certain that the church shall never receive the help 
of the state for the furtherance of her own ends; and that she shall 
never obtain any recognition at all by the civil power, beyond that 
granted to every other person or class in the Ration. 

By these evidences from the fourth century, as well as by the evi- 
dences from the church conventions of our own day, it is demoristrate(| 
again that there is no such thing as a civil Sunday, and that there is^jP 
such thing as civil Sunday laws. 

The first Sunday law that ever was enacted was at the request of the 
church ; it was in behalf of the church ; and it was expressly to help 
the church. The call for Sunday laws now is by the church; and 
wherever they are enacted or enforced, it is in behalf of the church, and 
to help the church; and it is so throughout history. The keeping of 
Sunday is not a civil duty, and can not of right be made a civil duty. 
Sunday is wholly an ecclesiastical institution, and the keeping of it can 
only be enjoined or enforced by ecclesiastical power. And whenever 
the civil power attempts to enjoin or enforce it, the civil power then in 
that is made subordinate to the ecclesiastical, and becomes only an in- 
strument of ecclesiastical oppression. 

That is the use that was made of Sunday laws in the fourth century; 
it is the use that has been made of them in the United States within 
the last three years; and that is the use that will be made of them in 
days to come as surely as the churches secure this help of the state in 
the furtherance oi their own political and ambitious aims. Through 
Sunday laws the Papacy was developed in the fouth century; and 
through Sunday laws there will yet be developed a living image of the 
Papacy in this country. Therefore wo are, and everybody else ought 
to be, uncompromisingly opposed to the enactment or the enforcement 
of any manner of Sunday laws. 

Mr, Elliott, who has spoken here, knows that there is no law in the 
Bible for keeping the first day of the week. I could read a passage 
from his own book, the Abiding Sabbath, page 184, in which he con- 
fesses the complete silence of the New Testament so far as any explicit 
command for the Sabbath or definite rules for its observance are con- 
cerned ; and everybody knows that the Old Testament does not say 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 87 

anything about the first day of the week as the day of the resurrection 
of ^the Savior. Dr. Johnsou, aud others here this morning, have said 
the first day of the week was taken because it is a memorial of the res- 
urrection of the Savior. 

It is the New Testament that tells about the resurrection of the 
Saviour. That is granted. Doctor Elliott confesses, and the American 
Tract Society publishes it, that there is complete silence in the New 
Testament in regard to it. If there is complete silence there, what 
right have they to put it into a law or adopt it and try to compel by 
civil law other people to keep that for which there is no scriptural 
authority ? 

Let me read another passage from another book printed by the 
American Sabbath Uuion. They gave $1,000 for that prize essay. 
Doctor Elliott got $500 for his. On page 186 of The Lord^s Day, writ- 
ten by Mr. E. A. Waffle, are these words : 

Up to the time of Christ's death no change had heen made in the day. The au- 
thority must be sought in the words or in the example of the inspired apostles. 

Then on the very next page he says : 

So far as the record shows they (the apostles) did not, however, give any explicit 
command enjoining the abandonment of the seventh-day Sabbath and its observ- 
ance on the tirst day of the week. 

Dr. Schaff, in the Schaff-Hertzog Cyclopsedia, says there is no law for 
this observance in the Bible. Christ gave none. If they confess, as 
they do, that Christ gaye no law for this observance, why do they want 
to compel people to observe it 1 I deny their right to compel me to do 
what Christ never commanded anybody to do. 

The Chairman. You admit there was a Sabbath before Christ camel 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. 

The Chairivlaj!^. And He said He came not to destroy but to fulfill *? 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. 

The Chairman. Is there anything in the Kew Testament which de- 
stroys the Sabbath already existing ? 

Mr. Jones. No, sir. 

The Chairman. Then, why does it not continue to exist? 

Mr. Jones. It does exist, and we keep that commandment which pro- 
vides for the Sabbath. 

The Chairman. Then you say there is a Sabbath recognized, and 
that is equivalent to its re-affirmation by Christ*? 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. 

The Chairman. I do not see from what you are stating but that 
Christ recognized an existing law and that is continuing at the present 
time. You say that it is one day and they say that it is another. 

Mr. Jones. But they are after a law to enforce the first day of the 
week when they confess that Christ never gave any command at all in 
regard to it. The commandment God gave says the seventh day is the 
Sabbath. 

The Chairman. It is still the Sabbath? 

Mr. Jones. Certainly j and we keep it, and we deny the right of civil 
government to compel any man to not keep it. 

The Chairman. The civil government of the Jews compelled its ob- 
servance ? 

Mr. Jones. That was a theocracy. 

The Chairman. Does it follow that when the only form of govern- 
ment is a theocracy and that embraces all that appertains to govern- 
ment, another form of government wliich is not a theocracy necessarily 



88 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

can Dot embrace the same subject-matter as the theocracy ? If the sub- 
ject-matter of a theocracy, a monarchical, or a republican form of gov- 
ernment is not the same, to control the establishment of good order in 

society, pray what is it ? We say, and it is our form of government, 
that tiie people shall legislate, shall construe the law, and execute the 
law. Under the old theocratic form God made the law, God construed 
it, and God executed it through his iDstrumentalities; but we do just 
the same thing by the will of the people that under the theocratic form 
of government was done in the other way. 

Now, if the Sabbath is necessarily for the general good of society, a 
republican form of government must make and enforce the observance 
of the Sabbath just as the theocracy did. You seem to be laboring, as 
it strikes me, under the im])ression that a civil government for the good 
of the people, carried on by us under the republican form, can not do 
anything that the theocratic form of government does when the theo- 
cratic is the only form. They necessarily cover the same subjects-mat- 
ter, the control, the developement of the good and the health of society, 
it makes no difference which one or the other it may be. 

Mr. Jones. The theocratic government is a government of God. 

The Chairman. So are the powers that be ordained of God. 

Mr. Jones. This Government is not a government of God. 

The Chairman. Do you not consider the Government of the United 
States as existing in accordance with the will of God I 

Mr. Jones. Yes; but it is not a government of God, The govern- 
ment of God is a moral government. This is a civil government. 

The Chairman. A theocracy is a civil government and governs in 
civil affairs as well as in the region of spirituality and morality and 
religion. 

Mr, Jones. Certainly ; and God governs it ; and nothing but a the- 
ocracy can enforce those things which pertain to man's relation to God 
under the tirst four comm,andments. 

The Chairman. But this proposed legislation is outside of the theo- 
cratic part of it. 

Mr. Jones. That is the point I am making here, that if you allow 
this legislation you lead to the establishment of a new theocracy 
after the model of the papacy. That is the very point I am making, 
that civil government has nothing to do with religious things ; that 
theocratic governments only have to do with religious things, and if you 
start in this course of religious things you will end only in a theocracy 
again, and that will be a man-made one, and that is just the papacy 
over again. 

The CHi.iRMAN, Yf e have had the Sunday laws in this country for 
not exceeding 300 years. They have constantly become more and 
more liberalized. Have you ever known an instance, though the 
sentiment in favor of a Sabbath seems to be growing constantly stronger, 
where any State in this Union undertook to enact a law that anybody 
should goto church, which is the danger yoo seem to apprehend"? 

Mr. Jones. E"ot yet. They are now after the first law. This will 
lead to that. The law of Constantino was enacted in 321, and it only 
forbade at first. They did not ask for too much at first. One of the 
ministers over in San Diego a couple of months ago, said : 

In tills thing you must not ask for too much, at first. Ask just wlia,t public senti- 
ment will bear, and when you get that, ask foi- more. 

As was said in another room in tills Capitol : 

If you give us a little we shall want more, aad when we get more it will satisfy us 
pretty well, but we shall still want more. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 89 

The Chaibman. Have you ever heard of a proposition beings made in 
any legislative body to compel any one to attend church on Sunday ? 

Mr. Jones. The propositions tkat arc made are for that very purpose, 
to stop the Sunday trains so they can go to church. 

The Chairman. But these people come here and say they have no 
such purpose, and they have been doing these things in States for a hun- 
dred years, and during the colonial period anterior to that time. Have 
you ever heard on the American continent, within the territory of what 
is now the United States, a proposition or a suggestion in a legislative 
body to compel anybody to attend church ? 

Mr. Jones. Not in a legislative body, but in ecclesiastical bodies. 

The Chairman. Ecclesiastical bodies do not make the laws. Con- 
gress is not an ecclesiastical body. 

Mr. Jones. But it is an ecclesiastical body that is seeking to influ- 
ence the law. 

The Chairman. You are entirely logical, because you say there 
should be no Sunday legislation by state or nation either, 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir j of course ; I am logical all the way through. 
I want to show you the principle that followed that, and the reasons I 
do this is because the last subject is involved in the first one. If you 
allow this principle and this movement to take the first step, they will 
see in the end that they take the last step. That is the danger. See 
how the logic of this thing came out and established the Inquisition. 

The Chairman. Was the Inquisition abolished by the abolition of the 
Sunday laws 1 

Mr. Jones. 1:^0, it was established by it. ■"- 

The Chairman. Then, if the Inquisition was established by the Sun- 
day laws, how was it abolished but by the abolition of the Sabbath^ 
How can you remove an effect except by removing its cause ^. 

Mr. Jones. Because it never abolished the Sunday laws. The Sun- 
day laws never have been abolished that would conform Sunday to 
everything. 

The Chairman. Then the Sunday law could not have been the cause 
of the Inquisition ? 

Mr. Jones. The power which embodied the Inquisition still continues 
and its emissaries have been in this country defending the Inquisition. 
That same power is now grasping for the control of the civil law, and 
the same causes generally produce the same effects. 

The Chairman. And the removal of the causes removes the effects 
with them ? 

Mr. Jones. Sometimes. 

The Chairman. Therefore the Sunday law was not the cause of the 
Inquisition, unless the Inquisition still exits. 

Mr. Jones. No ; the Sunday law did not cause the Inquisition. 

The Chairman. I understood you to say that it did. 

Mr. Jones. I say through that the church received the power to make 
the work of the Inquisition felt. I may use a means of getting a cer- 
tain power, conditioned that when I get that power I may use it in such 
a way entirely diiierent from any way in which the means were obtained, 
and a thing may be forbidden and yet the means by which I obtained 
it may not be forbidden. 

The Chairman. The Lord made the Sabbath and governed the Jew- 
ish nation for nearly 3,000 years with a Sabbath. J)o you think the 
Sabbath was for the good of the Jewish people or for their injury ? 

Mr. Jones. It was established for the good of the human race. 

The Chairman. Including the Jewish people ? 



&0 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

. Mr. Jones. Yes, sir. 

The Chairman. It was established as a part of the civil administra- 
tion. 

Mr. Jones. The church and the state were one. 

The Chairman. Therefore what we call the civil administration was 
included in that theocracy. 

Mr. Jones. The church and the state were one 5 they were united, 
and it was a theocracy. 

The Chairman. If the administration of the Sabbath, during those 
3,000 years at least, was for the good of the Jews and the human race, 
why will not the Sabbath be good for the Jews and the human race since 
the time of Christ as well as before ? 

Mr. Jones. It is for the good of them. 

The Chairman. The civil law must administer it if power does. 
Then we will get no Sabbath now, under our division of powers of gov- 
ernment, unless we have the Sabbath recognized and enforced by the 
State authority? 

Mr. Jones. Certainly; we have a Sabbath. 

The Chairman. Your proposition is to strike out the Sabbath from 
the constitution and condition of society in these modern times. 

Mr. Jones, i^o, sir. 

The Chairman. Certainly, so far as its existence and enactment 
and enforcement by law is concerned. 

Mr. Jones. Yes, by civil law. 

The Chairman. It was enforced by what we call the civil conduct of 
men under that theocratic form of government for at least three thou- 
sand years. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. 

The Chairman. ISTow the observance of the Sabbath we find depends 
upon the compulsory observance of the law. 

Mr, Jones. Not at all. 

The Chairman. It required the law of God, which He enforced by 
death, by stoning men to death when they violated it, and we have the 
Sabbath day only by virtue of what we call the civil law, which is 
equally a part of God's law. 

Mr. Jones. That government was not organized to enforce the Sab- 
bath. 

The Chairman. They stoned men to death who violated the law. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly, and every other transgression. 

The Chairman. God enforced it, in other words, by human means. 
, Mr. Jones. Certainly. My answer to all that is that that was a the- 
ocracy, a union of church and state. The church was the state, and 
the state was the church. 

The Chairman. You say now there is no state to enforce it f 

Mr. JoNES.;Isay that no government can enforce the Sabbath or those 
things which pertain to God except a theocratic government, a union of 
church and state. Therefore I say that if you establish such a law as 
is proposed here you lead directly to a union of church and state. The 
logic of the question demands it, and that is where it will end, because 
the law can not be enforced otherwise. These gentlemen say they do 
not want a union of church and state. What they mean by church 
and state is for the state to select one particular denomination and 
make it the favorite above all the denominations. That is a union of 
church and state according to their idea ; but a union of church and 
state was formed by Coastantine when he recognized Christianity aa 
the religion of the Eoman Empire. Everybody knows that that was a 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 91 

union of cliucli and state, and that it ended in the Papacy. The union 
of church and state is lor the ecclesiastical to control the civil power and 
use the civil power in its own interest. That is where this movement 
will end, and that is one of the reasons why we oppose it. 

The Ohaik:\ian. You say the church and state separated shall not 
do those proper things winch the church and state always did when 
united in theocracy 'I 

Mr. Jones. No, sir. 

The Chairman. Then why do you say that the state 

Mr. Jones. I did not mean to deny your proposition. I think the 
way you intend it I mean " yes," there. 

The Chairman. If in this division of the powers of government into 
church and state you exclude from the powers of the church the es- 
tablishment and enforcement and regulation of the Sabbath, why do 
you not necessarily, if the Sabbath is a good thing, pass it over to the 
control of the state ? 

Mr. Jones. Because if the church will .not recognize it and pre- 
serve it the state can not compel people to do it. The state can not 
do it ', the state is bound to fail that attempts it. 

The Chairman. Then you necessarily take the ground that God did 
wrong in the enforcement of the Sabbath during those three thousand 
years when His government was both church and state. 

Mr. Jones. No, sir ; if God would come Himself to govern and make 
Himself governor, as he did of Israel, He could enforce the law as He did 
there j but until God does that we deny the right of all these churches 
or anybody else to do it. 

The Chairman. Even if it is for the good of society ? 

Mr. Jones. What they think is for the good of society is for the ruin 
of society. 

The Chairman. Do you understand that it is the church or the state 
that is making this law ? 

Mr. Jones. It is the state that is doing it. just as Constantine did, 
to satisfy the churches. 

The Chairman. It may or may not satisfy the churches. The 
churches give their reasons here, which may be right or wrong, for the 
establishment of the Sabbath, for this Sunday legislation in all the 
States. The state, the whole people, make the law. You say that the 
whole people shall not make a good law because the churches ask for 
it. 

Mr. Jones. I say the whole people shall not make a bad law, for any 
civil law relating to things pertaining to God is a bad law. 

The Chairman. Then what God did for three thousand years for the 
good of the Jews and the human race was wrong 1 

Mr. Jones. Xo, sir; it was right. 

The Chairman. Then why not. continue it ? 

Mr. Jones. Because he has discontinued that kind of a government. 

The Chairman. We have done nothing in the world to unite the 
powers of government into those of church and state. We say those 
two departments shall not interfere with each other. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly. 

The Chairman. Here and in the States we are trying to run the civil 
part. We have taken jurisdiction of a portion of what God had entire 
jurisdiction as to the church and state in the civil relations of men. 
The entire society does that. We put the sovereignty into the hands 
of everybody except women, and some of us are trying to do that. We 
have the same subject-matter, the good of society, under our control, 



92 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

which, under the theocracy, was united into both church and state. If 
you do not let the state continue to do this which was essential to so- 
ciety then and is now you are striking at one of the great ends for 
which government exists. 

Mr. Jones. Not at all, because God has discontinued that kind of a 
government. 

The Ohaieman. He has not discontinued the necessity of laws for the 
regulation of society. 

Mr. Jones. He has, in that way. 

The Chairman. No 5 it is just as necessary that there should be a 
Sabbath now for the good of men as when God made and enforced the 
law by His direct supervision under a theocracy. 

Mr. Jones. But no government except a theocracy can enforce such 
law^. 

The Chairman. Then unless we have a theocracy we shall have no 
Sabbath? 
. Mr. Jones. We shall have no laws regulating the Sabbath. 

The Chairman. The Sabbath did not come to the Jews and to all 
mankind because there was a theocratic form of government among the 
Jews. How did the Sabbath come to mankind at large when there was 
no theocratic form of government? 

Mr. Jones. Those nations never kept it. Nobody but the Jews 
kept it. 

The Chairman. They could have kept it, because you say the Sab- 
bath existed for all ; not for the Jews alone, but for the human race. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly, but if they did not keep it it would do no 
good. 

The Chairman. It did not exist for good then. 
' Mr. Jones. Certainly ; a thing may exist for my good and I may re- 
fuse to use it. 

The Chairman. I was taking your statement as true, that it did exist 
for good outside of the Jews. 

Mr. Jones. I said it:was for the good of men. The Saviour said it was 
for the good of men. The Saviour died for the good of men. 
. The Chairman. You would abolish the Sabbath any way ? 

Mr. Jones. Yes, ia the civil law. 

The Chairman. You would abolish any Sabbath in human practice 
which shall be in the form of law, unless the individual here and there 
sees tit to observe it ? 

Mr. Jones. Certainly; that is a matter between man and his God. 

The Chairman. Your time has expired. Please take live minutes to 
close, as I have asked you some questions. Still they were questions 
that touched the trouble in my own mind. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly j but I supposed that I was to have an hour 
to devote to the points in question. 

The Chairman. We have always been accustomed to conduct these 
hearings with reference to getting at the difficulties we had in our own 
minds, and I do not feel as though you could complain with an hour 
and ten minutes if we give you ten minutes more. 
; Mr. Jones. All right. 

' Mr. Chairman, I have tried to show that in the fourth century this same 
movement developed a theocracy and developed the papacy, religious 
despotism, and oppression for conscience's sake. Now, I want to show 
the secret of at least a portion of the present movement. The repre- 
sentative of the National Eeform Association spoke here in behalf 01 
this proposed legislation. That association is asking for such a law 



SUNDAY REST BILL, 93 

and for snch an amendment of the Constitution as you have proposed in 
relation to the Christian religion in the public schools. That measure 
pleases them well, and this proposed Sunday law pleases them well. 

The Chairman. Just incorporate that proposed amendment to the 
Constitution in your remarks. 

Mr. Jones. Very well. It is as follows : 

A JOINT RESOLUTION (S. E. 86) proposing an amendment to the Constitntion of the United States 
respocting estabiisliments of religion and free public schools. 

Resolved hy tJie Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in 
Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States be, and hereby is, proposed to 
the States, to become valid when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of tho 
States as provided in the Constitntion : - 

Article 

Section 1. No State shall ever make or maintain any law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 

Sec. 2. Each State in this Union shall establish and maintain a system of free 
public schools adequate for the education of all the children living therein, between 
the ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, in the common branches of knowledge, 
and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian religion. But no money 
raised by taxation imposed by law or any money or other property or credit belong- 
ing to any municipal organization, or to any State, or to the United States, shall 
ever be appropriated, applied, or given to the use or purposes of any school, institu- 
tion, corporation, or person, whereby instruction or training shall be given in the 
doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances peculiar to any sect, denomina- 
tion, organization, or society, being, or claiming to be, religious in its character, nor 
shall such peculiar doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances bo taught or 
inculcated in the free public schools. 

Sec. 3. To the end that each State, the United States, and all the people thereof, 
may have and preserve governments republican in form and in substance, the United 
States, ehall guaranty to every State, and to the people of every State and of the 
United States the support and maintenance of such a system of free public schools 
as is herein provided. 

Sec. 4. That Congress shall enforce this article by legislation when necessary. 

The Christian Statesman, of October 2, 1884, said : . - 

Give all men to understand that this is a Christian nation, and that, believing that 
without Christianity we perish, wo must maintain, by all right means, our Christian 
character. Inscribe this character on our Constitution. * * * Enforce upon all 
who come among us the laws of Christian morality. 

To enforce the laws of Christian morals is to invade the rights of 
conscience of men, and that is precisely what they propose to do. Eev. 
David Gregg, D. B., pastor of the Park Street Church, Boston, a vice- 
president of this association and one of the principal men in it, said in 
the Christian Statesman of June 5, 1884, that the civil power " has the 
right to command the consciences of men." Then, if these men get the 
power to enforce their opinions through law, and through this Sunday 
law, they do intend to invade the rights of conscience of men. That is 
a prerogative of civil government, they say. 

Eev. M. A. Gault, a district secretary of the association and one of 
their leading workers, says : 

Our remedy for all these malign inflnences is to have the Government simply setup 
the moral law and recognize God's authority behind it, and lay its hand on any re- 
ligion that does not conform to it. 

ISTow, we have as much right to profess our religion and conform to it 
as they have to profess their religion and conform to that, aud they 
have no right to .seize upon the civil law and compel us to conform to 
their religion or to their views of religion. 

That is where we stand, and that is why we say to you, Senators, if 



94 SUiTDAY EEST felLt, 

they get tbis law it will end in the same kind of religidtis d^gpotife 
that it did before. 

Eev. E. B. Graham, also avicc-presidentof the Kational Reform Asso- 
ciation, in an address delivered at York, Nebr., reported in the Chris- 
tian Statesman of May 21, 1885, said : ^ 

We might add, in all justice, if the opponents of the Bible do not like our Gov- 
ernment and its Christian features let them go to some wild, desolate land, and in 
the name of the devil, and for the sake of the devil, subdue it, and sot up a govern 
ment of their own on infidel and atheistic ideas, and then if they can stand it stay- 
there till they die. 

That is what they propose to do. That is worse than Bussia. It is 
just about like Eussia. You know in the April Century Mr. Kehnan 
gave us some extracts from the Eussian law, to the efiect that one who 
speaks anything disrespectful of the Eussian religion shall be banished 
for life to the most remote parts of Siberia. These people go beyond 
Russia, because they want to send us to the devil, straight. 

Nor is that all. Eev. Jonathan Edwards, J). D., another vice-presi- 
dent of that association, makes us out to be atheists. He names atheists, 
Jews, deists, Seventh-Day Christians, Seventh-Day Baptists; he classes 
us all together. I will read his own words : 

These are all for the occasion, and as far as our amendment is concerned one class. 
They uise the same arguments and the same tactics against us. They must be counted 
together. * * * The first named is the leader in the discontent and in the outcry. 
It is his class. * * * The rest are adjuncts to him in this contest. They must be 
named from hiin. They must be treated, as for this question, one party. 

■ They class us as atheists and are going to treat all alike, and you 
are asked to do it. Eemember these are the views of members of the 
Kational Reform Association, whose secretary stood at this table this 
tnorning in defense of this Sunday law. These extracts show what his 
ideas are and how he would use them. 

Dr. Edwards, speaking of the atheist, says : 

I would tolerate him as I would a poor lunatic, for in my view his mind is scarcely 
sound. So long as he does not rave, So long as he is not dangerous, I would tolerate 
him. I would tolerate him as I would a conspirator. 

The Ohaieman. Many atheists are for Sunday laws. 

■ Mr. Jones. Very good ; let them be so if they choose, but what I 
am striking at is that these men have no right to say that I am an 
atheist simply because I do not believe in keeping Sunday. 

The Chairman. You come here and seriously argue as against these 
people because they and the atheists blackguard each other. What 
have we to do with that? They abuse each other. It is worse in the 
Christian than in the atheist, because the Christian has some rules to 
guide his conduct, which perhaps tl)e atheist has not. Here seems to 
be some strong intemperate language which one human being makes 
use of towards another. An atheist or a Christian alike may find fault 
with that. I do not know any way that wo can interfere with it. But 
if you claim to argue against this bill because these people abuse athe- 
ists, I reply to that by saying that many atheists are for this bill, just 
as these people are. They unite in support of this bill. Therefore 
mutual recriminations amount to nothing. 

Mr. Jones. But the mutual recriminations amount to this : Tha't al- 
though this is confined simply to words between them now- 

The Chairman. I do not think you ought to argue to us by showing . 
that these people use intemperate language towards each other. 

Mr. Jones. But I am doing it to show that they use the intemperate 
language now, but if they get the law they will use more than language 
against them. 



SUNDAY 3REST BILL. 96 

The Chairman. The atheist: is for this proposed law. He is not in- 
telligently going to support a law which enables these people to burn 
him at the stake. 

Mr. Jones. I know he is not intelligently going to do it. 

The Ghaieman. He is liable to be as intelligent as they are. Mr. 
Hume was a very intelligent man, so was Yoltaire, so was Frauklin, if 
Franklin was an atheist. Franklin was a deist, I suppose, at all events. 

Mr. Jones. It is safe to say that not one in ten of the people whose 
names are signed in behalf of this Sunday law know what is the inten- 
tion of it and what others will do when they get it. 

The Chairman. Then it is a lack of intelligence on their part ? 

Mr. Jones. I know people who signed that petition who would now 
be just as far from signing it as I would. 

The Chairman. That is because you told them of these terrible con- 
sequences which they had not believed would follow. The masses of 
the people do not believe that the Christian people of this country have 
united in every State in this Union for such a purpose. 

Mr. Jones. Here is the principle. Here are CjOOOjOOO Protestants and 
7,200,000 Catholics. 

The Chairman. Cardinal Gibbons has written a letter which is in 
evidence. He is for it. A great many Catholics are also for it, but it 
does not follow that those Catholics are for it simply because Cardinal 
Gibbons wrote that letter. They were for it before Cardinal Gibbons 
wrote that letter. You must remember that the Catholics in this coun- 
try are intelligent as well as we. Some of them are ignorant 5 some of 
us are ignorant. 

Mr. Jones. But here is the point : These people are complaining of 
the Continental Sunday. 

The Chairman. They do not complain of it because it is Catholic 5 
they complain of it because it is not so good for the people as our form 
of Sunday. 

Mr. Jones. Certainly ; and this movement comes from the Puritans, 
and these people know 

The Chairman. Do you argue against it because it comes from the 
Puritans or because it comes from the Catholics "? It comes from both, 
you say. We say it is for the good of society 5 that God is for it be- 
cause it is for the good of man. 

Mr. Jones. But let me state the point I am making. I think every- 
body knows that it is perfectly consistent with the Catholic keeping of 
Sunday for the Catholic to go to church in the morning and to the 
beer garden, if he chooses, in the afternoon. 

The Chairman. I have been all through this that the working peo- 
ple go through. I have been liungry when a boy. The first thing I 
can remember about was being hungry. I know how the working peo- 
ple feel. I have tugged along through the week and been tired out 
Saturday night, and 1 have been where I would have been compelled to 
work until the next Monday morning if there had been no law against 
it. 

i would not have had any chance to get that twenty-four hours' rest 
if the Sunday law had not given it to me. It was a civil law under 
which I got it. The masses of the working }>eople in this country would 
never get that twuuty-four hours' rest, if t liure had not been a law of the 
land that gave it to us. There is that practical fact, and we are light- 
ing with thai state of things; the tired and hungry man, woman, and 
child all over tliis country who wants a chance to lie down and rest for 
twenty-four hours out of the whole seven days. 



96 . SUNDAY REST BILli. 

Mr. Jones. Hon. Mr. Dingley, of Maine, said lasfc niglit that the 
American workingmen are indilierent to the efforts which are put forth 
in this direction. 

The Chairman. He was wrong about it. Mr. Dingley did not know 
the facts when he said that. 

Mr. Jones. He said he had investigated the matter. 

The Charman. I have investigated it, and I say that Mr. Dingley 
was simply laboring under a misapprehension. 

Mr. Jones. Dr. Crafts said this morning that he talked two hours 
with a committee of laboring men somewhere and that they asked him 
questions and continued on that way until at the end of two hours they 
indorsed this movement. If they are crying for it, if they are fairly 
tearing their hair for it, how can it be possible that he had to take two 
hours to persuade them that it was all right? 

The Chairman. Take his statement in full if you take it at all. He 
says they are crying for it. 

Mr. Jones. Then why was it necessary to talk to them for two 
hours ? 

The Oha,irman. Then you simply say he did not tell the truth ? You 
discredit the witness ? 

Mr. Jones. I do. 

The Chairman. You say perhaps he did not tell the truth ; that is 
all. I think he was right. 

Mr. Jones. But the two things do not hitch together properly. If 
they are calling for it so loudly certainly it ought not to require two 
hours to convert them. 

The Chairman. Abolish the law of rest, take it away from the work- 
ing people, and leave corporations, and employers, and saloon-keepers, 
and everybody at perfect liberty to destroy that twenty-four hours of 
rest, and law-givers and law-makers will find out whether or not the 
people want it, and whether they want those law-makers. 

Mr. Jones. Here is another point that comes in right there. Those 
who are asking for the law and those who work for it are those who de- 
mand and compel the people to work on Sunday. In the Illinois State 
Sunday Convention, at Chicago, about a month ago, it was stated in the 
first speech made in the convention: 

We remember how that the working-men are compelled to desecrate the Sabbath 
by the greafc corporations. 

^ The very next sentence was : 

We remember also that the stockholders, the owners of these railroads, are mem- 
bers of the churches; that they sit in the pews and bow their heads in the house of 
God on the Sabbath day. 

The Chairman. That is only saying that there are hypocrites in this 
world. What has that to do with this proposed law 1 

Mr. Jones. I am coming to that. It has a good deal to do with it. 
The stockholders who own the railroads act in this way, those men said, 
and it was stated also by a minister in that convention that a railroad 
president had told him that there were more petitions for Sunday trains 
from preachers than from any other class. 

The Chairman. There is a lot of hypocrites among the preachers 
then. 

Mr. Jones. Precisely. 

The Chairman. I do not find any fault with that statement if it is 
troe. It does not touch this question. 

Mr. Jones. If those preachers and church members will not keep the 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 97 

Sabbath in what they think is in obedience to tbe commandment of God 
■will they keep it in obdience to the command of the law 1 

The Ohaieman. Certainly the hard-working man needs rest, and the 
preachers, chnrcb -members, and millionaires may do as they please. 
The bill comes in here and says that the National Government, taking- 
part of the jurisdiction of the civil government of the States by a con- 
cession made by the States, by virtue of its control of interstate com- 
merce, and the post-office business, and the Arnjy and ISTavy, will take 
advantage of what the States have given to the General Government 
in the way of jurisdiction and introduce practices which destroy the 
Sabbath in the States. To prevent this is the object of this legislation. 
That is all that is undertaken here. It is simply an act proposing to 
make efficient the Sunday-rest laws of the States and nothing else. 

Mr. Jones. But those laws are to be enforced, if at all, by those who 
are so strongly in favor of them. 

The Chairman. No ; by the state. If these people were in favor of 
them or not in favor of them or violated them, that is another thing. 
A man may be for a law that he violates. A great many of the strong- 
est temperance people in the world drink intoxicating liquors. They 
say that they realize the evils, and that they are in favor of the enact- 
ment of law which will extirpate those evils. The strongest advocates 
I have ever seen of temperance legislation are men who have come to 
realize that the grave is just ahead of them. They can not get rid of 
the appetite, but they pray the Government for legislation that will 
save the boys. 

Mr. Jones. That is all right -, I am in favor of prohibition straight, 
but not Sunday prohibition. 

The Chairman. You can not adduce a man's practice as a repl}^ to 
the argument on a question that touches the public good. It does not 
vitiate a man's argument that he fails to live up to it himself. 

Mr. Jones. But the secret of the whole thing is this : Illinois has a 
Sunday law now that ought to satisfy anybody there, and they do not 
enforce it. If they do not enforce it, will they enforce a national law ? 

The Chairman. Is there any other point that you wish to ])resent '? 

Mr. Jones. There was one other point, and that is that we will be 
sufferers under such a law when it is passed. They i)ropose to put in 
an exemption clause. Some of them favor an exemption clause, but we 
would not accept one at all, and I think we will obey better without it 
than with it. 

The Chairman. You care not whether it is put in or not ? 

Mr. Jones. No, sir. Yv^e would rather it would be left out. 

The Chairman. You diifer from Dr. Lewis ? 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir. We will never accept an exemption clanse. 

The CHAIR3IAN. There are three times as many of you as of hi5 de- 
nomination ? 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir. We ask for none. We would not accept, on 
the merits, what comes by such means. 

The Chairman. You object to it? 

Mr. Jones. We object to the whole principle of the proposed legis- 
lation. We go t/y the root of the matter and deny the right of Congress 
to enact it. 

The Chairman. You say that the proposed exemption does not make 
it any better ? 

Mr. Jones. Not a bit, because if the legislation be admitted then we 
S. Mis. 43 7 



98 SUNDAY KEST BILL. 

admit tliat it is the right of a majority to say that such and such a day- 
shall be the Sabbath or the Lord^s Day, and that it shall be kept. The 
majorities change in civil government. The majority may change within 
a few years, and then the people may say that the day we believe shall 
be kept must be observed, or they may say that this day shall not be 
kept. If we admit the propriety of the legislation, we also admit the 
propriety oi legislation to the effect that a certain day shall not be kept, 
and it makes every man^s observance of Sunday or otherwise simply the 
foot-ball of majorities. That is what has made the Papacy from the be- 
ginning down, and that is the end of religious legislation of all kinds. 

The Ohaieman. Do you not think there is a distinction between the 
majority in a monarchical government and a republican government ^ 
In a moDarchical government the majority is simply one man who has 
power. 

Mr. Jones. But in a republic when you throw this legislation into 
civil affairs, it makes a great deal of difference. There is another prin- 
ciple involved. If we admit the exemption clause it will not help the 
thing. It will be exceedingly short. Suppose an exemption clause is 
given. There are people who will profess to be Seventh-day Adventists 
for the express purpose of getting chances to open saloons or houses of 
business on Sunday. Therefore, in outright self-defense, the majority 
will have to repeal the exemption clause in defense of themselves. 

The Chairman. Call Mrs. Bateham-s attention to tbat. 

Mr. Jones. Let me repeat it. If you give an exemption clause — it 
has been tried— there are reprehensible men, saloon-keepers who know 
they will get more traffic on Sunday than they can on Saturday, and 
they will profess to be Seventh-day Adventists 5 they will profess to be 
Sabbath keepers. You can not go behind the returns to see whether 
they are genuine in their professions or not. They will be Sabbath 
keepers, and then they will open their saloons on Sunday. Then in 
outright self-defense, to make your position effective, you will have to 
repeal that exemption clause. It will last but a little while. 

The Chairman. I agree with you there. 

Mr. Jones. For that reason, these people can not afford to offer an 
exemption clause, and for the reason that it puts the majority in the 
power of our conscience, we deny the right to do anything of the kind. 
I ask the organizations represented here to think of that. 

The Chairman. I should like to call everybody's attention to the 
point. If you need any legislation of this kind you had better ask for 
legislation to carry out your purposes and be careful that in the effort 
to get the assistance of the parties against you you do not throw away 
the pith and substance of all for which you ask. 

Mr. Jones. Yes, sir; that is the point. To show the workings of this 
principle I will state that Arkansas in 1885 had an exemption clause in 
its Sunday law. That exemption clause, it was claimed, was taken ad- 
vantage of by saloon-keepers to keep open on Sunday. A delegation 
went to the legislature of Arkansas and asked them to repeal that ex- 
emption clause so that they could shut the saloons on Sunday. The leg- 
islature did it. If they had shut the saloons on Sunday that would 
have been well enough, but there was not a saloon-keeper arrested un- 
der that repealed law ; there was not a man who worked on Sunday 
prosecuted under it ; there was not a man who worked on Sunday fined 
under it; but there were Seventh-Day Baptists and some Seventh-Day 
Adventists, poor almost as Job's turkey, who were prosecuted and 
fined. One man had his only horse taken from him and his cow, and 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 99 

at last his brethren contributed money to save him from jail. Such 
men were prosecuted time and again, and the legiskitare had to restore 
that exemption clause to save these poor, innocent people from the 
persecution that arose under it. 

The Chairman. I am glad you put in that fact because it is some- 
thiog that happened. 

Mr. Jones, I ask leave to read the statement made in the Arkansas 
legislature by Senator Crockett upon that very subject: 

Let me, sir, Illustrate the operation of the present law by one or two examples. 

That is, the law as it stood with the exemption clause unrepealed. 

A Mr. Swearigen came from a Northern State and settled a farm in County. 

His farm was 4 miles from town and far away from any house of religious worship 
He was a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and after having sacredlj 
observed the Sabbath of his people (Saturday) by abstaining from all secular work 
he and his son, a lad of seventeen, on the first day of the week went quietly about 
their usual avocations. They disturbed no one,Jnterfered with the rights of no one. 
But they were observed and reported to the grand jury, indicted, arrested, tried, con- 
victed, fined ; and having no money to pay the fine, these moral Christian citizens of 
Arkansas were dragged to the county jail and imprisoned like felons for twenty-five 
days — and for what f For daring, in this so-called land of liberty, in the year of 
our Lord 1887, to worship God. 

Was this the end of the story? Alas, no, sir! They were turned out; and the old 
man's only horse, his sole reliance to make bread for his children, was levied on to 
pay the fine and costs, amounting to l{p38. The horse sold at auction for $27. A few 
days afterward the sheritf came again and demanded $36 — !|11 balance due on fine and 
costs and ^'25 for board for himself and eon while in jail. And when the poor old 
man, a Christian, iniud you, told him with tears that he had no money, he promptly 
levied on his only cow, but was persuaded to accept bond, and the amount was paid 
by contributions from his friends of the same faith. Sir, my heart swells to bursting 
with indignation as I reijeat to you the infamous story. 

Another, and I am done. Sir, I beg yon and these Senators to believe these are 
neither fancy nor exaggerated sketches. Five years ago a young man, newly mar- 
ried, came to County, from Ohio. 

He and his wife v/ere Seventh-Day Baptists. The young girl had left father and 
mother, brothers and sisters, and all the dear friends of her childhood, to follow her 
young husband to Arkansas — to them the land of promise. The light of love sparkled 
in her bright young eyes. The roses of health were upon her cheeks, and her silvery 
laugh was sweet music, of which her young husband never wearied. They purchased 
a little farm, and soon, by tireless industry and frugal thrift, their home l)lossomed 
like a rose in the wilderness. After awhile a fair young babe came to them to brighten 
the sunshine, and sweeten the bird-songs. They were happy in each other's affec- 
tion and their love for the little one. For them ''all things worked together for 
good ; " for in their humble, trusting way they worshiped God and loved their fel- 
low-men. 

Two years ago the law under which their prosperity and happiness had had its 
growth was repealed! Accursed be the day which brought such a foul blot upon our 
State's fair fame! A change, sudden, cold, and blasting as an arctic storm, came over 
their lives and pitilessly withered all their bright flowers of hope. Under tliis re- 
peal, persecution lifted its ugly, venomous head. The hero of my sad story was 
observed by an envious, jealous neighbor, quietly working, as he believed God had 
commanded him, on Sunday. He was reported to that inquisitorial relic of barbarism, 
the grand jury, indicted, tried, convicted, and thrown into jail because his conscience 
would not let him pay the fine. 

Week after week dragged its slow length along. Day after day the young wife, 
with baby in her arms, watched at the gate for his coming, and, like Tennyson's 
Marianna — 

She only said : "My life is dreary- 
He Cometh not," she said. 

She said: " I am a'wear5- — awoarj' — 
I would that I were dead." 

Then baby sickened and died ; the light in the young wife's eyes faded out in tears; 
her silvery laugh changed to low, wailing sobs. Pale-faced misery snatched the roses 
from her cheeks and planted in their stead her own pallid hue. Sir, how can I go on ? 
At length the cruel law was appeased, and this inoffensive citizen (except that he had 



100 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

loved God and sought to obey Him) was released from prison and dragged his weary 
toet to the happy home he had left a few short weeks "before. He met his neighbors 
at the gate bearing a coffin. He asked no questions ; his heart told him all. No, not 
all! Ho knew not — he could never know — of her lonely hours, of her bitter tears, of 
the weary watching and waiting, of the appeals to God, that God for whom she had 
suffered so much, for help in the hour of lier extremity, of baby's sickness and death. 

He could not know of these. But he went with them to the quiet country burial- 
place and saw beside the open grave a little mound with dirt freshly heaped upon it, 
and then he knew that God had taken both his heart's idols and he was left alone. 
His grief was too deep for tears. With staring eyes he saw them lower the body of 
his young wife into the grave. He heard the clods ra^ttle upon the coffin, and it 
seemed as if they were falling upon his heart. The work was done and they left him 
with his dead, and then he threw himself down between the graves, with an arm 
across each; little mound, and the tears came in torrents, and kept his heart from 
breaking. And then he sobbed his broken farewell to his darlings and left Arkansas 
forever. Left it,',sir, as hundreds of others are preparing to leave if this general as- 
sembly fails to restore to them the protection of their rights under the Constitution, 
national and State. 

On next Monday, at Malvern, 6 as honest, good, and virtuous citizens as live in 
Arkansas, are to be tried as criminals for daring to worship God in accordance with 
the dictates of their own conscience ; for exercising a right which this Government, 
under the Constitution, has no power to abridge. Sir, I plead, in the name of jus- 
tice, in the name of our republican institutions, in the name of these inoffensive, 
God-fearing, God-serving people, our fellow-citizens, and last, sir, in the name of Ar- 
kansas, I plead that this bill may pass, and this one foul blot be wiped from the es- 
cutcheon of our glorious commonwealth." 

I myself, with other brethren in California, had to send hundreds of 
dollars into Tennessee to support the families of the brethren of our own 
faith thb.e, while the husband and the father, who made the money for 
their support, were in jail because they chose to work for their families 
on Sunday and make bread for them after keeping the Sabbath accord- 
ing to their conscience. That has been done, Mr. Chairman, in these 
United States. That is the care these people have for the laboring- 
man. 

The Chaikmaist. You reason from that that there should be no Sun- 
day law whatever ? 

Mr. Jones. If you allow a Sunday law you must allow it to any ex- 
tent. It must be enforced. All they did was to enforce the law simply, 
as in the Eoman Empire they put Paul to death. They simply enforced 
the law, but the law was wrong. Any condition of the law that allows 
such things as that is a wrong condition of the law. 

The Chairman. This bill proposes that work must not be done to 
the disturbance of others. This work was not done to the disturbance 
of others 1 

Mr. Jones. It was not. 

The Chairman. Then if they had a law like this, they were wrongly 
convicted under the law, and innocent men were punished, just as in- 
nocent men are sometimes hung. But you can not reason that there 
shall be no law against murder because innocent men are sometimes exe- 
cuted. It is a fault in the administration of the law. You can not reason 
from that that there should be no law. 

Mr. Jones. The speech from which I have read was made by Senator 
Crockett, in the legislature of Arkansas. 

The Chairman. Do you know whether this young man had money 
or friends ? 

Mr. Jones, Dr. Lewis, can you certify whether he had money ? 

Mr. Lewis. The case was never reported to other churches for relief. 
I do not know as to his personal estate. 

The Chairman. Do you not think he was a peculiar man who would 
allow his child to be killed and his wife to starve ? 

Mr. Lewis. The case was not reported to our churches in the ^^orth. 



li^,. 



SUNDAY EEST BILL. 101 

Mr, Jones. About that peculiarity, I will say that John Bun y an 
staid twelve years in Bedford jail when he could have gotten out by 
simply saying the word *' yes," and agreeing^ that he would not preach. 

The Chairman. It is a very different thing to be called on to say 
that he would abstain from the performance of a great duty in his 
church. Buuyan preached the Gospel, and he would not gree not to 
preach the Gospel. But here is a man who lets his wife and child die 
rather than pay $25 or $50 and get out and have an opportunity to go 
to work for them. 

Mr. Jones. What kind of a law is that which puts a man in a place 
where his wife and child have to die ? 

The Chaiuman. Suppose he was a guilty iiiaij ; suppose he did not 
believe it was an oftense to steal j that he conscientiously thought he 
could take goodsfrom another in a certain way, and had been convicted 
under the law and was under the penalty of payiug $L^5, is he to put his 
right of conscience againsc the demands of wife and child and against 
the judgment of the community and the State in which he lives, and 
to which he owes all the right to the enjoyment of property, and every- 
thing else he has? In this case a man saw all this evil done rath-er 
than pay $25 or $o5, and he says he docs that by reason of his con- 
science. 

Mr. Jones. Did you ever hear of a man whose conscience taught him 
that it was right to steal ; who said that it was a conscientious convic- 
tion to steal ? 

The Chaiuman. I have heard of a great many instances where an in- 
dividual confessed that he had conscientiously^ violated the law, and he 
was punished. 

Mr. Jones. Precisely; and the Christians were put to death under 
the Eoman Empire for violating the law. 

The Chairman. But that does not answer my question ; and it is not 
necessary that it should be ansv/ered. 

Mr. Jones. The end of it was that the poor man lost both his wife 
and child. 

The Chairman. What became of him 1 

Mr. Jones. He left the State. 

The Chairman. I should think he ought to leave it. 

Mr. Jones. That is also true of six other men, as good, honest, vir- 
tuous citizens as live in Arkansas, who followed the dictates of their 
own conscience. 

The Chairman. There is a good deal of humbug about the sometimes 
so-called dictates of one's own conscieuce. If a man is to set up his 
conscience against the obligation to do what is right, and refuse to per- 
form his duty toward society, an uniutelligeiit. uninformed conscieuce 
of that kind might be allowed to destroy all society. It is not con- 
science always, 

Mr. Jones. There is no conscience in regard to the state. Tiie con- 
science has to do with what God has commanded, and a uvdn reads in 
the Bible what God has commanded. 

The Chairman. Should those who conscientionsly believe in free 
love be allowed to indulge in it ! 

Mr. Jones. Tbere is no point in that. Where is there any conscien- 
tious conviction in free love? I can not discover it. 

Tlie Chairman. But there must be laws which prohibit immorality^ 

Mr. Jones. I ask you to deiiue what immorality is, and then I will 
answer your question. 



102 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

The Chairman. If you do not know what tbe expression means I 
shall not undertake to enlighten you. 

Mr. Jones. I know what it means. 

The OnAiRMAN. Then why do you ask me to define it ! Why do you 
not answer the question! 

Mr. Jones. Because there are modified forms which refer to crime. 
Immorality is itself a violation of the law of God, and civil government 
has no right to punish any man for a violation of the law of God as the 
law of God. 



FURTHER REMARKS BY REV. A. H. LEWIS, D. D. 

Mr. Ley/is. Mr. Chairman, the objection raised by Professor Jones 
against the exemption in favor of Sabbath-keepers seems to me wholly 
imaginary. So far as Seventh-day Baptists are concerned, I know it 
would be impossible for any man opening a saloon on Sunday to pre- 
sent the excuse that he was a Seventh-day Baptist. A saloon-keeping 
Seventh-day Baptist is an unknown thing throughout their history of 
more than two centuries. Such a man could not obtain recognition, 
much less church membership in any Seventh-day Baptist community 
or church. Nor do I believe from what I know of the Seventh-day Ad- 
ventists that such a case could occur in connection with that people. 
The possibility of any such deceitful claim could be easily guarded 
against by a provision requiring that in any case of doubt the one 
claiming to have observed 1 he seventh day should be required to bring 
official certificate of his relation to a Sabbath-keeping church. Such a 
provision would end all difficulty^ 



REMARKS BY REV. BTEFHEH M. HASKELL. 

Mr. Haskell. Mr. Chairman, I wisii to say a few words that you 
may more clearly discern the point whieii has been made by Mr. Jones 
concerning the right of legislation. W e do not say that the CFnited 
States Government has no right to legi^ijite in reference to certain days 
on which men may work, but we say that it has no right to legislate 
with a view to enforcing as a religious ordinance or religious observ- 
ance certain days. 

There are certain days as fast days and thanksgiving days in regard 
to the observance of which we make no question, but enforcing a relig- 
ious observance on individuals is the point to which we object. 

While we would appreciate the efforts of these friends to place some 
provision in the law that might be a benefit to those who conscien- 
tiously observe the seventh day, the principle that lies beneath the pro- 
posed legislation would not be affected by such an exemption. While we 
appreciate their efforts in this direction, they do not see the bearing of 
the conclusion obliged to be reached in the enactment of such a law. 
So we would object to the exemption clause which has been suggested, 
not because we would not appreciate the efforts to do something in otir 
behalfj but because there is a principle which underlies it. It is on that 
ground, and that ground only, that we object to it. 

I merely mention this point as an explanation, so that the committee 
may see the difference between the views that are presented. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 103 



EURTHER SEMAEKS BY MES. X C. BATEHAM. 

Mrs, Bateham. I should like to say that the point which has been 
made was a point carefully considered by the Woman's Christian Tem- 
X)era!ice Union, and we saw the danger. Yet we wished to '.)0 exceed- 
ingly fair. I consulted nine pervious of different classes of seventh-day 
people to know whether they wished such au exemption, and whether 
they would be satisfied with what was proposed. They represented 
themselves as being in approval of some such provision as has been sug- 
gested, and we thought it could be done perhaps in such a way as to 
afford them the exemption which they desire, because they said that 
such an exemption is necessary. 

The Ghaiiiman. Let me ask you a few questions, Mrs. Bateham, to 
see if the Woman's Christian Temperance Union understood exactly 
the relation of what they propose to do to this legislation. Here is a 
bill which relates to interstate commerce, to postal work, to the Army 
and to the Navy. It relates to that subject-matter which is carved out 
of the independent, full jurisdiction of a nation by the States, which 
were once complete sovereignties, and transferred to the General Gov- 
ernment. The occupations I have mentioned are ail of a public nature, 
and to carry them on the nation has such an opportunity to invade the 
Sabbath-rest laws of every State in such a way as to nullify them. 
The nation at large is unrestrained by any Sabbath law whatever. If 
it may carry, on its post-ofiice business on the Sabbath it may go to any 
extent, and it does go already to a very great extent and an increas- 
ingly great extent. So in regard to interstate commerce, and so with 
the Army and the Navy* 

Now, you go to our Seventh-Day Baptist or Adventist friends, for 
instance, and propose to introduce a principle by which they can carry 
on the Post-Office Department on the Sabbath just as completely as 
they see fit. In other words, you propose to exempt them from the 
operation of the law so far as it prohibits post-office work on the Sab- 
bath. Suppose you have a Seventh-Day Baptist man for postmaster. 
Suppose you fill up every post-office in the country on the Sabbath with 
Seventh-Day Baptist people. You have the Post-Office Department in 
operation by virtue of this exemption because they can do the work 
conscientiously on that day. If you limit it by saying the bill shall 
not apply to the Adventists and others, the bill provides that already. 

Mrs. Bateham. If you remember the clause, we do not propose to 
provide that they shall be able to do this work, but that they shall be 
exempt from the penalty. They are not allowed to do the work, bat 
they are to be exempt from the penalty. Therefore, unless they could 
prove that they had not done this work to the disturbance of others, 
it would be impossible for them to carry on post-office matters, for in- 
stance, or any other public employment on Sunday. 

The Chairman. Is not that equivalent to saying that if the penalty 
shall not be enforced against them there shall be no law against them, 
because the law without the penalty is simply an opinion: it is not a 
law ? 

Mrs. Bateham. The law could provide that they should not open a 
post-office, for instance, or any place of public business, and if there 
was a fine imposed they woidd be compelled to close such places on 
Sunday. It was, of course, only thrown out as a suggestion from us 
that if it could be done we should like to have such a provision in 
the bill. We are satisfied the people want the law. and if the law can, in 



104 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

your wisdom, be arranged with such an exemption, then we wish it; 
otherwise we do not. We are ail glad, I think, to have the gentlemes 
admit that they do not want such an exemption, for that releases us 
from the place where we were. 

The Chairman. This is not to he a general Sunday law. These peo- 
ple all live in States, and they can work at their private occupations 
just the same under similar amendments to the State law if the State 
saw fit to make such amendments. Professor Jones says it does not 
work well in Arkansas, and I should think it did not from his descrip- 
tion. But these are public occupations, or quasi public occupations, we 
are dealing with ; that of interstate commerce, for instance, carried on 
by great corporations which are public in their relation to the working- 
men, because they are exercising a great public function in carrying on 
transportation which appertains to everybody all over the country. 

This proposed law undertakes to prohibit the nullification of all Sun- 
day-rest laws in the States so far as to provide that interstate com- 
merce shall not be carried on in violation of the law upon the Sabbath. 
When you come to the private occupations which are regulated by the 
States, if they choose to allow the Seventh-Day Baptist people to work 
on Sunday in those private occupations, on the farm, in the workshop, 
in the factory, this measure does not interfere with them at all. 

Mrs. Bateham. I have not the words before me, but my impression 
is that there is a clause in the bill ])roviding that the jurisdiction of 
Congress shall be exercised over the Territories in this matter. There 
is something of that kind in the bill, and this proposed exemption was 
designed to reach those cases rather than to apply to the general gov- 
ernmental action. 

The Chairman. You think the exemption might be made with refer- 
ence to the Territories 1 

Mrs. Bateham. Yes, that was the point we had in mind in this gen- 
eral action. I have not the words of the bill before me, but there is 
something of that kind in it which we had in mind. 

I wish to say also that one of the requests of our National Woman's 
Christian Union was that the word " promote " should be changed to 
*^ protect," in the title of the bill, so that it should have no appearance 
of what all Americans object to, any union of church and state. That 
amendment was proposed and accepted by the American Sabbath 
Union, the organized body which has just been in session in this city. 

The Chairman. Do you not think that the word '' protect " implies 
power to command and compel ? An army protects. 

Mrs. Bateham. All our laws protect us, do they not ? 

The Chairman. You would make this a law ? 

Mrs. Bateham. I suggest that the bill be made a law, and that it be a 
law which shall protect the civil Sabbath, not to promote religious wor- 
ship, but to protect the day as a day of rest and of religious worship. 

The Chairman. It seems to me that " protect" is a stronger and 
more interfering word than " promote." However, all these sugges- 
tions are important. 



e.emaee:s by johii b. wood. 

Mr. Wood. Mr. Chairman, as a member of the Society of Friends, a 
Quaker, I should like to say a few words. 

1 have a great deal of sympathy with people who talk about the right 
of consciences. I do not think the United States Government has any 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 105 

right over the conscience. We, as Friends, deny their right over our 
conscience whiie we act in accordance with the revealed will of God, 
the Bible. 

In looking" at this Sunday question I see nothing in the Bible, there 
is no word in it in which it is stated that we shall have to work on the 
lirst day of the week. Therefore, I do not think the Seventh-Day Bap- 
tists have any right to object to the proposed legislation. The only 
thing they lose is one more day's work out of the week. 

The Society of Friends have always denied the right to fight. The 
result has been that in the United States they have never lost a life by 
that means, not even during the last war. The Lord Jesus Christ has 
always protected them. 

I think any Saturday Baptist who believes honestly that the Sabbath 
is Saturday can depend upon the Lord^s providing for him in five days 
of the week just as well as if he worked six, and he will have two Sun- 
days iustead of one, and be that much better off. 



ARGUMENT BY JOHN B. WOLFF. 

Mr. Wolff. Mr. Chairman, gentlemen of the committee, ladies and 
gentlemen : The chairman has asked me to give my objections to the 
bill. If it please you, I should like to make a few general remarks be- 
fore or after on subjects-matter germane that have come up since I took 
the bill, and as briefly as possible. 

The Chairman. It is now 27 minutes past 3 o'clock. If I call time 
on you at 4 you will not object ? 

Mr. Wolff. No, sirj I do not think I shall, because I have not had 
anything to eat since breakfast and I am sick. 

Perhaps I ought to apologize. I am rather a severe critic. I com- 
mence with the title of this bill. I believe you have a statute which 
requires conformity between the title and the bill, that the title shall 
express what is comprehended in the bill: 

A bill to secure to the people the eDJoyment of the first day of the week, commonly 
known as the Lord's day, as a day of rest, and to promote its observance as a day of 
religious worship. 

I have two criticisms to make upon that. In the first place, there is 
a disagreement between the title and the body of the bill, as the title 
says *' promote," and the language substantially means " enforce." 

The second criticism I have to make on it is that the title of the bill, 
together with the last clause in the last section, completely and abso- 
lutely confirms the charge that this is intended to be the enforcement 
of the Sabbath from the religious stand-point. The words themselves 
are here; they need no explanation or criticism. If you will refer to 
line 5 of section 1, you will find these words : 

That no person, etc., shall perform or authorize to be performed any secular work, 
labor, or business to the disturbance of others, works of necessity, and mercy, and 
humanity excepted. 

Here is a direct interference with the points raised by Professor Jones, 
not only with regard to my religious couvictions but with regard to my 
civil rights and convenience. It goes further and i)rovides that I shall 
not enter into any enjoyment or pleasure whatsoever ^'on the first day 
of the week, commonly known as the Lord's Day, or during any part 
thereof, in any Territory, district, vessel, or place subject to the exclu- 
sive jorisdictiou of the LTnited States." 



106 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

The Ohaiuman. *^ To the disturbance of others," you will observe. 

Mr. Wolff. The words *'tothe disturbance of others" appear be- 
fore in the eighth line. E"ow we come to another of those" ambiguities 
which, like the explanation of immoralityj blasphemy, and obscenity in 
one of jour laws, has been greatly abused, and we fall afoul of that fun- 
damental principle that I laid down in the outset of my talk, that there 
is always danger in ambiguity in constitutional compacts. Doubtful 
interpretations of constitutional compacts are always dangerooe to per- 
sonal liberty ; and that which is dangerous to personal liberty is always 
dangerous to society, to the State as well as to the individual, every 
time, logically and inevitably. 

I pause here to bring in another point, and I want these peoi)le to 
hear it, because it is vital to this whole question* 

The Chairman. You say you come to an ambiguity in the first sec- 
tion. To what do you refer ? 

Mr. Wolff. I refer to "secular work," What is '^secular work f^^ 
It is the business of the legislature to define the term of the statute in- 
volving prosecution, criminality, and expense, so that the executors of 
the law shall not make any mistake in its interpretation and execution. 

The Chairman. Is not the matter of interpretation left to the judi- 
ciary, usually ? 

Mr. Wolff. The judiciary, even the Suprerne Court of the United 
States^ are just as much subject to psychological influences and personal 
interests as the hod-carrier who carries the brick up to the top of your 
building, and that will remain so, through the imperfection of humanity^ 
forever. 

The Chairman. It is their business to construe the law. 

Mr. Wolff. It is their business to construe the law, but you go yon- 
der to that chamber of the Supreme Court, and seldom a vital question 
comes before that body that there is not a minority opinion. 

The Chairman. Shall there therefore be no laws or judges? 

Mr. Wolff. I am not going to discuss that subject. I concede that 
there must be laws and judges. 

The Chairman. You merely refer to the imperfection of human tri- 
bunals *? 

Mr. Wolff. I refer to it as proof that you have no right to put a 
man in a position where he will be subject to the consequences of an 
act resulting from the fallibility of human judgment j that is all. 

The Chairman. You say that the expression "any secular work" is 
objectionable because it does not define what is secular ? 

Mr. Wolff. It does not define what is secular and what is religious 
work. It leaves it open to courts and constables, and to Anthony Com- 
stook, for instance. 

The Chairman. Do you say that the Word "secular" is an ambigu- 
ous word? 

Mr. Wolff. I say the sentence including that word is an ambiguous 
expression, capable of perversion, misconstruction, and abuse; I say 
that fearlessly. 

The Chairman. It is proper for you to say so, but it is also proper 
to say that it is a well-adjudicated phrase, and it is impossible to use 
any more exact language, because there is none more exact known in 
human afPairs. 

Mr. Wolff. I think you are mistaken, but I Will not stop to discuss 
that point. 

The Chairman. 'No ; proceed with the line of your argument. 

Mr. V/OLFF. In regard to the second section of the bill 1 have only to 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 107 

speak generically. More tban half a century ago — and I am solry I have 
not the document with ine ; I would have had it here if this heariu<,^ 
had not come upon me so suddenly — more than half a century ago this 
same question was agitated and discussed as it was supposed to a final- 
ity and decided in regard to the carrying of the mails on Sunday, that 
the public interests and business of the country justified and required 
it. 

I wish to say that this Government is an outgrowth ; that the fathers 
had no comprehension of tli^ immense magnitude, the resulting effects ; 
that the Constitution itself in this respect is very lame in some re- 
gards owing to tliat fact: that this system of mails and mail-carrying 
and interstate commerce are outgrowths from causes that were not 
recognized or comprehended at the time the compact was organized, 
and they have become so interwoven with every interest, material, in- 
teHectual, social, and religious, that to break them up to-day would 
create chaos throughout the entire country. 

Til at is all the comment I have to make on that section now, because 
it is too large a part of the subject. It would take an hour or an hour 
and a half to discuss that point alone. 

Section 5 of the bill directly and positively conflicts with my right of 
private judgment and action in making contracts, in performing service 
and receiving compensation therefor. The sixth section of the proposed 
act closes with these words: 

To secure to the whole people rest from toil during the first day of the week, their 
mental and moral culture, and the Religious observance of the Sabbath day. 

There again you come to the question, what is a religious observance 
of the Sabbath? What is religion ? You asked the question here to-day. 
I am sorry the gentleman did not tell us. He did not do so understand- 
in gly to me. He quoted substantially what one of the encyclopedias 
says on the subject; but that does not define it. 

You will pardon me for digressing in the remark here that the whole 
intellectual difficulty in this debate grows out of the fact that you are 
unable to comprehend the question you are dealing with. You ask a 
gentleman here to tell what religion is and he can not, because here are 
four kinds of them under one regime, and there area thousand of them 
in the world, each one having equal right of interpretation, construc- 
tion, and action, all dissenting one from the other. Who shall tell which 
one is right when doctors disagreed 

The GHAIR3IAN. The majority. 

Mr. Wolff, ^o, sir; that is' an arbitrary rule. 

The Ohairxan. The majority in civil affairs. 

Mr. Wolff. The majority has the power to say what I shall do or 
not do, but the majority never reaches my conscience, and never can. 

The Chairman. Precisely. You make that distinction splendidly 
and just right. In matters of civil conduct the majority necessarily 
regulates and we have to obey, although the majority may be wrong. 

Mr. Wolff. Yes, sir; it is majority power and you can not main- 
tain civil society in any other way. 1 will admit that. 

The Chairman. We have got to obey until we convince the majority 
that they are wrong. 

Mr. Wolff. It is better to enforce a bad law, as Grant said, until 
the evils growing out of it compel its repeal. 

The Chairman. You argue that this will be a bad law? 

Mr. Wolff. Yes, sir; and, as Professor Jones said, such legislation 
has always proved to be bad, because it attempts to exercise preroga- 



108 SUNDAY EEST EILL. 

tives by Government with the. exercise of which even God himself does 
not interfere. 

The Chairman. That, you know, is assuming a good deal. 

Mr. Wolff. The other side has assumed here in this discussion 
nearly everything that has been stated. The trouble, as I was about 
to remark a moment ago, is that the whole thing is a case of ignoratio 
elencM (misapprehension of the question). You have assumed here 
that God directly interferes with the affairs of men, establishes govern- 
ments, creates theocracies, abolishes them and re-institutes them, and 
you have not offered one single proof to the logical mind that your 
major proposition is correct at all. 

The Ohaikman. We have not even proved that there is any God. 

Mr. Wolff, l^o, sir; not to start on. It is assumption from begin- 
ning to end, and you ask me to submit to the logic growing out of an 
argument with the major proposition of the logic left out. 

The Chairman. And that major proposition is this : There is a God. 

Mr. Wolff. You may make the major proposition less difficult; but 
it comprehends two phases — that there is a God and that He directly 
and specifically interferes with the affairs of men ; builds up one man 
and knocks him down, builds up another individual and knocks him 
down. You ought to prove, before you ask me to submit", that He in- 
stituted the Sabbath. You see the controversy between these disput- 
ants over what constitutes the Sabbath. 

When I was a young man, and occupying then a public position, I 
was taken to task by the editor of the paper of my town because I 
made a lapsus linguw and said that the world was sixty thousand years 
old instead of six thousand, the popular theory with regard to the an- 
tiquity of our earth. Now, no man is able to tell the age of this earth. 
You asked Dr. Sunderland a question, very pertinently, whether the six 
days of creation were literaly six days, to which I had previously made 
proper answer by stating the difficulty of making it six days in the or- 
dinary sense of the diurnal revolution of the earth. The theologians 
have now given it up. There is no respectable, intelligent theologian in 
civilization who dare come up and say that old mother earth is but six 
thousand years old ; and yet for thousands of years this material and 
mental monstrosity had been urged by pulpit and religious press upon 
the average of mankind. 

You see where you stand exactly ; you are dealing with something 
you do not understand. One objection that I have to this legislation is 
the fact that you, as legislators, are undertaking to deal with the sub- 
ject of religion when the very petitioners themselves who come here 
do not understand it, much less this Congress, and I do not think they 
understand or live it, if I am to be the critic of their conduct. You are 
dealing with a problem outside of your domain entirely, outside even 
of your comprehension, if you take the religious aspect of it j but if you 
take the secular aspect of it, then it is perfectly within the purview of 
your legitimate functions. 

The gentleman alluded to days set apart. It would be legitimate for 
you to set apart a day of rest ; you do set apart holidays where the 
people take recreation, are exempted from work and the performance 
of public duties, and that is just about as far as you have any right to 
go. The danger from this influence, as Professor Jones has shown, is 
immense. 

I stop here and take time to make a simple statement of what has 
been accomplished. My friend over there, I think, has hardly examined 
into the details of this matter as I have. Let us see what has been done. 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 109 

In tbe Constitution of the United States tbere is no provision made for 
the appoi'.itment of cliaplains generically. If there is, show it to me. 
There is none whatever. From the organization of the Government 
down to fnls lime, in this hall and in the other end of the Capitol, in the 
Army and Xavy, yon have been appointing and paying them out of the 
l)ublic ftiuds. You have been taxing non-religionists to pay the ex- 
penses for these services and they have had no x)ower to protest. 

jMr. Jones. That is my position. 

Mr. Wolff. That is usurpation. Thatis taxation without representa- 
tion. That is the basis of all political revolution. 

The Chaiemai\\ Let me ask you a question. The mass of the people 
are believers in the Christian religion. The Army and the Navy come 
from the masses of the people. We compel them to join those branches 
of the public service and to lay down their lives for our benefit. Do 
you think that we could properly exercise that compulsion and deny 
them the consolations of religion in their last hours on the battle-field 
by refusing them the services of a chaplain ? 

Mr. Wolff. I do not thir^k any man who goes onto a battle-field has 
any need of the consolations of religion. He ought to get ready before 
he goes there. 

The Chairman. But suppose the soldiers have failed to reform and 
to join the church and to establish good religious relations before they 
enter the Army. Suppose that we summon them to death, would you 
deny them the opportunity of conversion or of religious consolation in 
their last hours "? 

Mr. Wolff. I have no faith whatever in death-bed repentance. 
When death and damnation are at the door, stimulating a man to recant 
the errors of life, conversion is compulsory and has no value in it. 
Besides, if there is any truth in your system, the dying soldier does not 
need the services of chaplain, as he can intercede in his own behalf, 
which is better than the proxy business. 

In the second place, we ]).ave all over the United States State and 
national Sabbath laws. That is a quasi recognition of the orthodox 
idea of the enforcement of at least a partial theocracy. 

x\gain, in the courts of law and equity and minor courts of every char- 
acter, we swear people upon the orthodox Bible to tell the truth. You 
make a man kiss it or acknowledge it. That is a recognition of a 
theocracy. 

So I might go through the catalogue and show you that step by step 
these encroachments have already been made, and my rights have 
been invaded and trampled under foot. This is but another step in the 
same direction, with the logical sequences following which have been 
brought out here to-day. 

If I wanted to get an unanswerable argument against this movement 
I have never had a better opportunity in all my reading and study than 
I have had here to-day. The very conflict of opinion that exists here, the 
very contrariety of interests that are brought to the front under the 
pressure of this discussion, show the impossibility of the execution of 
such a law equitably in the country. Th« very discord of religious 
opinion and interpretation of the Scriptures go to show beyond the 
shadow of a doubt that it is a forbidden subject with which you have 
no right legitimately to meddle. J do not need any other argument 
than I have heard to day. 

I do not wish to impinge upon any man's conscience. I will go as far 
as any man living to enforce the right of conscience in every respect, 



lit) SUNDAY REST BILL. 

the rights of man limited only by the same rights in others, for that is 
the law governing it every time. 

So with regard to this temperance question. There is not a better 
friend of that question on this earth. I have drank the sequence of the 
infamous thing to the bitterest dregs. I fought it day and night for a 
large part of my life. I have been the instrument of driving it out of a 
whole county, and while I staid there and fought it, it staid out of the 
county. I have been the instrument single-handed of driving it out 
of one towu, and of another town double-handed by the aid of a promi- 
nent citizen of Mount Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio, and for forty- 
odd years no glass of liquor has been legally sold and drank in the 
place. 

This is my work. I published two temperance papers and studied 
the subject 5 and to-day if the religious people who are advocating this 
from a wrong standpoint, bringing it into the religious phase, will make 
it purely secular, I will forfeit my very life if I can not furnish an ar- 
gument on the sumptuary phase of that question that no man living 
can answer logically. 

But I am barred from it. My powers in the cause of temperance 
have been dormant and slumbering for twenty -five years, simply because 
they have seized this question, non- secularized it, brought the religious 
element to bear on it, made it a part and parcel of this movement, and 
finding themselves incompetent to carry it forward without the ballot 
for woman they are ready to precipitate, like a mighty avalanche, the 
entire religious influence of this country into the vortex of politics in 
order that they may carry their point. I have been over every inch of 
the ground. That is the state of affairs we are in. 

Let us have secular legislation. Let us have a perfect and absolute 
disassociation of church and state. Do not tax me, who protests, to 
support your religious institution. I have a different view. I put my 
hand in my pocket to support my ideas, but I am compelled by the 
present legislation, the non-taxing of church property and by the pro- 
posed legislation I will be compelled, to pay a tax to support your 
ideas of religion and God. I propose to protest, and not only to pro- 
test but to fight, while brain and body stay together. Then I shall en- 
deavor to come back and try it a little more if I can. 

Mr. Chairman, I will be a little epigrammatical and then probably 
you will not be required to call time on me. The legitimate functions 
of the Congress of the United States are generic. It should never in- 
dulge in special legislation. It should never exercise judicial powers, 
as your committees do here every day when Congress is in session. 
Every case that comes before you requiring the exercise of the judicial 
function should be brought under the action of a law that would be so 
generic that it would comprehend every case that could possibly arise 
of the same nature. 

That is what I wanted to say when I visited your house on one oc- 
casion, not on this subject, but on the subject of legitimate legislation 
in regard to personal rights and property. Every law should be so 
universal that it would comprehend every citizen of the United States 
and not do injustice to any one. Who dares to dispute the correctness 
of that proposition? 

There is another point of great moral moment. Every time you un- 
dertake to discriminate upon the moral quality of an act by reason of 
the time when it is transacted, you make a mistake. If you say to the 
man whom you call a sinner that such and such secular work is wrong 
if done on Sunday and right if done on Monday, you lessen that man's 



tti 



SUNDAY REST BILL. Ill 

estimate of tbe morality of his own conduct; you take from him the 
most gigantic potency that can exist to control and regulate his moral 
conduct. 

Whatever is right to-day was right. every day since the morning stars 
sang together, and will be right untiltheknellof time shall be soanded. 
Whatever is wrong to-day was wrong from the beginning and will be 
wrong to the end. The moral qualit^^ is in the act performed and not 
in the time when it is done. That is just the principle not comprehended 
in this proposed law, and it is demoralizing logically in its effect alike 
upon those who submit to it and those who enforce it. 

The Chairman. I understand that you are in favor of Sunday laws. 

Mr. Wolff. Permissive, not positive. 

The Chairman. Will you not explain what you mean by a Sunday 
law that is simply permissive"? 

Mr. Wolff. The President of the United States issues a proclama- 
tion that the 29th day of November shall be set apart for a day of 
feasting and worship and thanksgiving. People keep it who want to 
keep it. The 4th of March is a public holiday in this district, because 
the President, of the United States is inaugurated on that day. I mean 
to say that you have no right to say that John B. Wolff or Professor 
Jones shall keep any particular day for any particular reason. 

Kow I will go back and state another fundamental proposition. 
There is only one legitimate basis for the true organization of society. 
There is only one legitimate purpose of its existence, and that is the 
enforcement of personal rights against all coolers and goers, against 
the Government itself, which contantly tends to abuses because too 
frequently in the hands of incompetent and irresponsible men. 

You will permit me to say, as I said publicly last Sunday night from 
the platform, that your Constitution, as to the guaranty of personal 
rights in this country, and your State constitutions are not worth so 
much rotten paper. 

First of all there is no power of self- enforcement. The mere state- 
ment of platitudes of rights may be made by any convention of politi 
cians, by any constitutional convention providing for organic com- 
pacts, national or State, but there is no power of enforcing them. Soci- 
ety does not protect us to-day. If you will go to work and make laws 
by which our material interest shall be protected, by which our per- 
sonal rights shall be enforced, you would be in a good deal wiser busi- 
ness than interfering with our rights of conscience as this bill interferes 
with those rights. 

I wish to impress the point distinctly upon you that the distinction 
between the moral qualities of acts determined by time is demoralizing 
in the extreme. 

In reference to what my friend Sunderland said — with whom I am 
shoulder to shoulder in great public ideas, and I would be as sorry to ofiend 
him as any man I know in this city — with regard to what he has said 
on the subject of the anti(]uity of my ideas, I call your attention to the 
fact that within two hundred years these objectionable manifestations 
of religious zeal have been made. Look at the blue laws of Connecticut. 
Lf)ok at the blue laws of the State of Maryland, unrepealed to-day. If 
there was a critical interpretation and a rigid enforcement of the law, a 
man would have his tongue branded in this District for blasi)hemy. 
Look at the Salem witchcraft. Look at the thousands and tens of 
thousands of people who were victifnized by ])opular religious fanati- 
cisms and subjected to cruel torture, imprisonment, deprivation of rights, 
and finally slaughtered. Think of good old Boston, the hub of the uni- 



112 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

verse, when less than two Lnndrecl years ago women were driven through 
the streets of that city, tied to the tails of carts, and half naked, and 
whipped until the snow was blood-stained, simply because they believed 
in a peculiar form of spiritual inspiration. 

That is just the point Professor Jones and myself, though in antipa- 
thy as to doctrine in every sense, agree upon, I can shake hands and 
join hearts with that man and these gentlemen over here in the very gen- 
erous, philanthropic, and just view they take upon this subject. Give 
to every man and woman the right to worship God according to the dic- 
tates of his own conscience, separate the church and state completely, 
and enforce the moral laws by penal sanctions if you will, but remem- 
ber that punishment never reformed anybody. Remember that. 

While I am not here to say we shall not have laws with penal sanc- 
tions, I am here to say that no penal sanction ever reformed a criminal 
in the history of the world. It is not in the nature of things. When 
you get the legislative wisdom that will enable you to pass such penal 
statutes as shall make the criminal respect the law, when he feels the 
halter about him, then you will have a law that will reform a criminal. 
When you can make laws so just that the common sense of the veriest 
criminal shall assent to their justice and enforcement, not in extrem- 
ities, not vindictively, not to give to society satisfaction and punish 
the man, but making him thus feel that justice only has been done, 
then your criminal jurisprudence will be reformatory in its effect, and 
never until then. 

In thus speaking on these subjects that came up incidentally, I am 
speaking for my country and my country's good. I am speakingfor my 
own children. I have all the responsibilities of life resting upon me 
and all the interests at stake in the good order of society, in my own 
children and grandchildren that any man can have. I will not allow 
these clerical gentlemen to be one whit ahead of me in my desire to 
promote the welfare of society. But there is such a thing, Mr. Chair- 
man, as doing more evil by the remedy than the disease itself, and it is 
very dangerous to set such precedents as you will set in this bill, even 
if it were free from the critical exceptions that have been made to it 
before you to-day. 

It is fraught with danger more imminent than you can imagine, and 
when this thing goes on, as my friend over there has pointed out, like 
the little rivulet starting away up in the m.ountains, it is tiny, you can 
divert it, you can make it irrigate the arid land, you can make it turn 
the wheels of manufacture, you can turn it into the instrtimentalities of 
commerce, but when it has added stream to stream until it becomes a 
giant river like the great Potomac, or the Mississippi, or the Missouri, 
it becomes uncontrollable ; it has overtopped your powers as the prob- 
lems of this Government have overfcopped the legislative capacity and 
political science of the men who are running the machinery. Still you 
dablile with forbidden subjects. Yon impose upon yourselves burdens 
that do not belong to your functions, and you augment the difiiculties 
in the settlement of the problems that are within your legitimate sphere, 
and to which you might successfully address your attention. I refer to 
those problems that have been investigated by committees of Congress. 

Thanking you, Mr. Chairman, and omitting a great deal that I have 
here that is suggestive, let me ask you not to press this legislation in 
the name of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people who have 
not been appealed to at all. One class, Mrs. Bateham says, was avoided 
because they were against it. Why should they not have been allowed 
to record their protest and give their reason as a minority ? 



SUiJiDAY BEST BILL. lid 

The Chairmais^ They still have the opportunity. 

Mr. Wolff. You have not the time. Have the merchants as a body 
been appealed to? 

The Chaie]man. But you know here are petitions presented. This is 
a hearing upon petitions. Here is an opportunity to put in words the 
purpose of these people, and the legislative bodies are still open to pe- 
tition, to renioustrance, to hearing. 

Mr. Wolff. That is right. Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, you will 
allow me to say on the subject of those petitions that I had the iioiior 
ten or twelve years ago to represent 75,000 people who entered a. solemn 
protest pro forma against this kind of legislation. I spoke for over three 
hours before the committee of the House on the subject. That petition 
is there filed away to-day. When you talk about petitions I would be 
willing, if a gii^mbler, and I do not gamble, to bet $50 that I could go 
into tiio street and in two hours' time get twenty signatures to a peti- 
tion to hang your honor. 

When petitions are presented to people for signature the merits of 
the matter are not discussed. For instance, I will take a question in 
which you are interested. Some years ago we got up a petition to the 
legislature of Kew York to limit acquisitiveness by law ; and, by the 
way, that is the only remedy; it covers the whole subject. We went 
into ward 17. 1 did not go there, but I say " we." A gentleman em- 
ployed agerus to canvass the ward, and he got 7,000 signatures to that 
petition. How many persons intelligently signed it 1 That is all there 
is in that. 

Again thanking you for the time you have given me, and not waiting 
to have time called on me, so that I have that advantage of you, I will 
close. 

The Chairman. You have exceeded your time nearly ten minutes, 
but it is all right ; I did not want to interrupt you. I will read the note 
passed up by Mr. Wolft", so that it may appear in the record whom he 
represents : 

New YoiiK, Decemher 12, 1888. 

Dear Sir : In my capacity as chairman of the executive committee of the Ameri- 
can Secular Union, I hereby appoint you as the agent and representative of that so- 
ciety to appear before Congressional committees in Washington -whenever opportunity 
offers for the purpose of opposing legislation instituting new Sabbatarian laws or re- 
stricting citizens' work or privileges on any day of the week on religious grounds. In 
short, the Secular Union will depend on you to defend secular ideas, of the entire sep- 
aration of clmrch and state as indicated in the nine demands, and as evidently in- 
tended by the founders of this Republic. You are also requested to report to us all 
meetings of iogislative committees that have consideration of such questions and to 
report the proceedings. 
Yours truly, 

E. B. FooTE, Jr., 
Chairman Executive Committee, Ame^'ican Secular Union. 

Mr. John B. Wolff. 

Mr. Wolff. I want to explain that they do me that honor, but I do 
not belonij to that body. 

The CnAiR3rAN. Will you not state what the body is? 

Mr. Wolff. It is a body of unbelievers, rather materialists and secu- 
larists, who take the extreme ground, which I do not take, for the pur- 
P'ose of preventing any interference with questions of religion. 

The Cn AIRMAN. I wish merely to suggest that the ambiguous word 
'^ secular" is made use of here. 

Mr. Wolff. Yes, sir j but I did not do that. You do not catch mo 
there. 

S. Mis. 13 8 



114 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

The Ohaieman. So we can really be supposed to understand what a 
secular union is. 

Mr. Wolff. It is contradistinguished from a church union. 

The Chairman'. The courts would construe the language probably if 
there was any occasion to do so. 

Mr. Wolff. Yes; the word *' secular" I believe is well defined. 



ABBITIOHAL EEMAEKS BY PEOF. A. T. JOHES. 

Mr. JoiMES. In answer to the question raised by Mr. Wood, that the 
cor.^^cicDtious convictions did not require us to work on the first day ot 
the week, the sixth day, I wish to read Judge Cooley^s opinion. 

Mr. Wood. I referred to the Bible. 

Mr. Jones. Well, Judge Oooley's opinion is of force in law. Judge 
Cooley says : 

But the Jew who is forced to respect the first day of the week, wlien Ms cocscience 
requires of him the observance of tlae seventh also, may plansihJy urge that the law 
discriminates against his religion, and by forcing him' to keep a second Sabbath in 
each week, unjustly, though by indirection, punishes him for his belief. 

I have shown 

The Ohaieman. He says "plausibly." That word "plausibly'' 
might indicate that there are some counter views 8/)mewhere. 

Mr. Jones. The argument is unanswerable. The supreme court of 
Pennsylvania mention certain grounds upon which this is sustained, I 
read further from Judge Cooley. He says: 

The laws which prohibit ordinary employments on Sunday are to be defended, either 
on the same grounds which justify the punishment of profanity, or as establishing 
sanitary regulations, based upon the demonstration of experience that one day's rest 
in seven is needful to recuperate the exhausted energies of body and mind. 

That is the basis of this petition. His answer to that is this : 

The supreme court of Pennsylvania have preferred to defend such legislation on the 
second ground rather than the firsts but it appears to us that if the benefit to the in- 
dividual is alone to be considered, the argument against the law which he may make 
who has already observed the seventh day of the week, is unanswerable. 

The Chairman. But he also holds that for the genera], the public 
good, Sunday laws are constitutional. 

Mr. Jones. Yes, so as to be dispensed upon authority. Then the 
nest sentence is as follows : 

But on the other ground it is clear that these laws are supportable on authority, 
notwithstanding the inconvenience which they occasion to those whose religious 
sentiments do not recognize the sacred character of the first day of the week. 

It is something unusual for persons to undertake to ans^ver an unan- 
swerable argument, but that is the only way in which it can ever be 
done, by authority. That is the way the Papacy has always done it; 
and the only way an answer can ever be made to an unanswerable argu- 
ment is to say, "We have the authority, and you must submit." 

The Chairman. It does not follow that there is no unanswerable 
argument in support of Sunday laws, I take it. 

Mr. Jones. There is the authority. 

The Chairman. There is authority for the Sunday laws. It does T^ot, 
follow because the Sunday laws are supported by authority that tht^re- 
fore there is no sufficient argument upon which to base them. 

Mr. Jones. What authority is there for Sunday laws ? 

The Chairman. That is what you have been discussing ; but you 
seem to say that because Sunday laws are supported by authority it is 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 115 

the only argT-imcnt in favor of a bad law that tlicre is authority for it. 
But there may be good authority for the Sunday law. 

Mr. JojS^es.'^ That is what is sliown here, that there is no good au- 
thority for it when it unjustly punishes a man for his unbelief. 

The Cn.ii?nrAN. He does not say it is bad. 

Mr. Jones. But it is. Is there any answer to an unanswerable ar- 
gument ? 



EEMAEKS BY LOUIS SOHADE, 
Editor Washington Sentinel. 

Mr. SCHADE. Mr. Chairman, this has been a very interesting hear- 
ing. Very strong arguments have been made which might be used 
hereafter to great advantage. I think the question has been fully 
touched on both sides, and I hope the proceedings will be published. 

The Chairman. I propose to i»ake an effort to get the remarks 
printed. It may be necessary to modify some of the documentary mat- 
ter if it is very diii'use, but the substance of all that has been said I 
shall endeavor to have printed. I suppose you have some reference to 
the number of copies. I shall get as many printed as I can, if it should 
prove to be a matter of public interest. 

Mr. Schade. I should think it would prove to be so. It would be 
satisfactory to everybody present here to have these arguments appear, 
and it would be of great use afterwards. 



ADDITIONAL REMAEKS BY PROF. D. B. WILSOiST. 

The Chairman. Mrs. Bat eh am, is there anything further that you 
desire to say in behalf of these petitioners ? 

Mrs. Bateham. I think there is nothing further. 

The Chairman. Is there anything further that any one desires to say 
at this hearing ? 

Mr. Wilson. I wish to say that when my brother, Mr. Jones, divides 
the Decalogue into four and six commandments and puts the fourth with 
the three first, a truer view of the Decalogue is that the fourth com- 
mandment is the key-stone of the arch, and that God and man meet 
together in the fourth commandment ; duties tofrod and duties to man 
meet together. If you construct the arch in that way you have it in a 
better view than to set the four to one side and the six to the other 
side. 

I also wish to say that the view that the Old Testament institutions 
were purely and simply a theocracy is not entirely correct. That sub- 
ject has been fully examined. Moses was the head of the civil state ; 
Aaron was the head of the Jewish Church; and there were kings and 
high priests. Their judges sat in the gates of the city and adminis- 
tered law. Their ecclesiastical laws and institutions were not mingled 
so that the king was the head of the church, and church and state 
were not united under the Old Testament dispensation. 

The CHAIR3IAN. You mean to say that the king was the head of the 
state ? 

Mr. Wilson. He was the head of the state, but not the ruler of the 
church. 



116 SUNDAY BEST BILL. 



ABDITIOHAL EEMAEKS OE ME. CEAFTS. 

Mr. Crafts. Sunday amusements, it sliould be observed, are net 
within the scope of a national Sunday-rest law, except in the District 
of Columbia and the Territories. In the States the law can suppress 
only the Sunday work of the Government's mail and military service, 
and of interstate commerce, leaving Sunday excursions and all other 
local matters for State regulation. But the people of the Territories, 
though relatively few, ought certainly to have the best of government, 
as they are under the direct control of Congress, which is made up ot 
our best legislators. To enact the section of the Blair Sunday-rest bill 
which forbids public amusements on Sunday " to the disturbance of 
others," would simply be giving the people who are under the jurisdic- 
tion of the national legislature the same protection in this matter that 
nearly all those who are governed by State legislatures have had from 
the foundation of the Eepublic. In support of this important section 
of the bill I now submit numerous facts, proving historically tliat Sun- 
day work and business can not be successfully prohibited without in- 
cluding the amusement vender in the general suspension of works of 
gain, 

THE RELATION OF SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS TO SUNDAY WORK. 

The workingmen of the United States and of Europe are demanding a stricter 
Sabbath observance. Recent agitations to this end have originated, in most in- 
stances, not in churches, but in labor organizations, and have been prosecuted, not 
in the name of religion, but of humanity. Socialism is leading a renaissance of 
Puritanism. These movements are a striking illustration of that Scripture saying 
about God's laws, ''His commandments are not grievous." Christians tunneling from 
one side of the mountain for the glory of God, and workingmen tunneling from the 
other side for their own good, meet at the Fourth Commandment, which is found to 
be as fully in harmony with the nature of man and the necessities of society as any 
other of the Ten Commandments, on which, it should be remembered, all Christian 
governments rest — Justinian, Charlemagne, and Alfred having based their legal codes 
on the Decalogue. 

One reason why the Sabbath law and other Bible laws are often considered bur- 
densome by many is that they fail to understand that religion is only living in ac- 
cordance with nature—conversion being like the sotting of dislocated bones, restor- 
ing them to their proper place and functions. The Fourth Commandment, at least), 
is a " natural law in the spiritual world." A restful change one day in seven from 
one's usual labors and amusements is found to be required, not only by the laws of 
church and state, not only by the laAVS of the Old Testament and the New, but also 
by the laws of nature. Sabbath rest is good, not only for our spiritual nature, but 
also for animal nature in man and beast, and even for machinery. 

The failures and successes of workingmen in their recent efforts to secure a more 
restful Sabbath, point out clearly the only defensible ground of Sabbath observance, 
which it is all important for both the friends of God and the friends of man to find 
and fortify. To show what this ground is, not by Scripture, not by abstract theoriz- 
ing, but by " the philosophy that teaches by examples," is my present purpose. The 
efforts of workingmen on the continent of Europe and in our own country during the 
past four years to check the rapid increase of needless Sunday work, are a praciical 
study of the holiday Sunday. 

What do the facts of recent history show as to the relation of Sunday amusements 
to Sunday work? 

In 1886 the Italian legislators made a law requiring that children employed in 
factories should each rest one day of each week. The movement was inaugurated 
by a minister, but supported by the Hygienic Society and several workingmen's or- 
ganizations. Note that these societies did not venture to ask even this irregular one- 
seventh of time for rest for any toilers except children in factories. In 1885 Austro- 
Hungary, in response to the bitter cry of Sabbathless toilers, enacted a stringent 
Sunday law which emancipated even printers from Sunday work — for a Sabbatla or 
two. Then Greed recaptured his fugitive slaves. That law, however, serves one pur- 
pose at least — it stands as that nation's confession to the world that the continental 
Sunday, the holiday Sunday, is to many a day of needless toil. Thos« who know the 
continental Sunday best, it will be seen, have the same opinion of it that the Quaker 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 117 

had of a "bad neigli'bor, of wliom Lis opinion was asked — ho replied, '* He would malie 
a tip-top stranger." 

The reactiou against the Sunday work of the continental Sunday is even stronger 
in Germany than in Austria or Italy. In Stuttgart six hundred shop-heepers have 
engaged to close their shops on the Sahbath. In Carlsruhe a second distribution of 
letters on that day has been stopped. In Alsace-Lorraine public houses are legally 
closed till noon. In 1836 a thousand carpenters of Berlin sent the following petition 
to the German chancellor for protection against Sunday work : 

"Prince Bismarck : You have declared that you would not legally forbid Sunday 
work until convinced by the voice of the laborers that they demand rest on that 
day. Here, then, is their voice. We declare explicitly that we desire a law which 
will grant us protection in the enjoyment of freedom from work on Sunday. Sunday 
labor leads to misery, crime, and vagabondism." 

Bismarck, instead of aiding German workingmen to recover their Sabbath rest, 
blockaded them, not only in Parliament, but also by his own bad example in keeping 
the employes in his brandy factories at work seven days in the week. The commis- 
sion appointed by the German Government to investigate this matter of Sunday work 
finds the evil very great and very general, but they find no remedy; and even con- 
servative German papers declare that nothing can be done at present except to edu- 
cate public opinion. Uuless they arc blind to the lessons of recent history they v^'ill 
begin that education with the fourth commandment. This rejected stone must be- 
come the head of the corner in any successful defense of Sabbath rest. As a permit 
for *'beer only" alwaya admits whisky in its shadow, so a permit for Sunday sport 
always includes Sunday work. In France, where many laborers are seen working 
in the fields and at their trades during the Sunday holiday, those not at work make 
it a day of riot and riots ; workingmen are making demands for Sabbath rest on social- 
istic and selfish grounds, but with as little success as in Germany. No wonder that 
travelers in France see no old carpenters, no old stone-cutters, no old shoe-makers! 
No wonder French workingmen, even while they live, do less work in seven days than 
Englishmen in iix! 

At a socialistic congress held at Ghent, in Belgium, in 1886, one of the chief 
demands was for Sunday rest. In Holland, also, workingmen are even now mak- 
ing a desperate effort for emancipation from Sunday work. The Independent, of 
February 17, 1887, says of this movement: "The measures proposed in Holland aro 
characteristic of the whole European phase of the problem. No work is to be allowed 
that is open to public view ; no sales of any sort shall be made in public, with the 
exception of eatables ; no places of public amusement shall be open before 8 
o'clock in the evening, nor are intoxicating drinks to be sold near churches in case 
worship is being conducted in them, nor anywhere before noon. The Government 
declares that it is impossible to forbid all work on Sunday or to close all places of 
amusement, as this is the only day of recreation which these laboring men can enjoy ; 
and that the object of this legislation should be merely to prevent any disturbance of 
public worship." 

In contrast to these failures of continental workingmen in their efforts to shut out 
Sunday work without excluding Sunday amusements British workingmen, in 1886, 
as often before, protested against Sunday opening of museums, and continued to fa- 
vor the Sunday closing of saloons, recognizing that not only the coarse Sunday amuse- 
ment of the saloon but also the more civilized Sunday amusement of the museums 
imperil Sunday rest by secularizing the day. 

Even in our own Vv'est and Southwest, where the holiday Sunday prevails only in 
a varioloid form, workingmen are asking emancipation from the ever-increasing Sun- 
day work. For instance, in La Crosse, not long since, the Norwegians formed a Law 
and Order League to enforce the Sabbath laws. Saloons had been suffered to keep 
open as a part of the holiday Sunday. Some of the dealers in better goods, unwilling 
to lose their share of the Saturday night's wages, claimed the same sufferance. Their 
competitors in the same line of goods felt it necessary to do the same in eelf-defcnse, 
uptil nearly al! the retail merchants and their clerks had lost their Sabbath rest, and 
gained notliing in return. They were simply doing seven days' work for six days' 
profits. The movement of the Law and Order League was an attempt to recapture 
the lost rest. 

The liquor dealers being closed out, retaliated by enforcing the law against the 
horse-cars, and seem to have accomplished their purpose, as in many other places, 
St opping enforcement by enforcement. No Sabbath law should have any restrictions 
whose enforcement can be used to nullify the whole law. I do not believe the run- 
ning of horse-cara on the Sabbath is either a work of necessity or of mercy. They 
are " man-killers," as now managed. But until the public conscience (I do not say 
" public sentiment") is educated to condemn them as wronging both God and man, it 
would bo better to be content with a "six-day law" forbidding any conductor or 
driver or any other employ^ engaged in work not prohibited on the Sabbath, except 
those engaged in household service and in care of the sick and of live-stock, to work 



118 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

on more than six days per vscek, wliicli could be arranged by tlie use of one-seventh 
more men, and so give back, by the law of supply and demand, a week's wages for 
six days' work and a seventh of time for rest, rather than to keep the law against 
Sunday horse-cars on the statute books for no other use than the defense of rum- 
eellers aud the defeat of Sabbath enforcement. 

That LaCrosso movement has this bearing on my main argument— it shows us of tho 
East, as a signal to '' hold the fort " of our quieter Sabbath, how a holiday Sunday 
soon becomes a working day even in the smaller cities of our own country, and even 
where it is tolerated, against statute law, only by the law of custom. 

In Chicago, in 1883, a much more significant exhibition of the tendencies of the 
holiday Sunday to ever-increasing toil was made in a movement to secure from the 
State legislature a stricter law against opening shops and stores on the Sabbath, in 
which the Knights of Labor assemblies and labor unions of clerks, barbers, butchers, 
and other trades joined with the Sabbath Association in mass m^efcings and other 
forms of agitation. 

At Cincinnati, in 1886, a mass meeting of 1,500 Germans, very largely workingmen, 
adopted strong resolutions in favor of the enforcement of the Sabbath law and the 
protection of the day for rest and worship, a counterblast to another meeting of Ger- 
mans of the baser sort, antagonizing the *' Puritanical Sabbath laws." This German 
meeting in support of the Sunday laws shows that some of our Germans have heard 
from Fatherland on the Sunday question. 

Another confession that the holiday Sunday is a burden is the fact that Louisiana, 
on January 1, lfe87, put in force her first real Sabbath law. About all the good this 
law can do is to warn other States not to get into the slough of Sabbathless toil 
by following the will-o'-wisp of Sunday amusements. This new law requires *' all 
shops, saloons, and places of public business to be closed at 12 o'clock Saturday night, 
and remain closed continuously for twenty-four hours, during which time all business 
in them is declared illegal. From its operations are excepted all newspaper offices, 
printing-offices, book stores, drug stores, apothecary shops, undertaker shops, public 
and private markets, bakeries, dairies, livery stables, railroads, whether steam or 
horse, hotels, boarding-houses, steam-boats and other vessels, warehouses for receiv- 
ing and forwarding freight, telegraph offices, and theaters and other places of amuse- 
ment." 

If the reformed Sunday at New Orleans leaves so many at work seven days in the 
week, what must it have been before it turned over the new leaf? 

In Newport, Va., in 1888, the News, the organ of the colored people, protested 
against the Sunday labor of that port. In Washington the Barber Assembly of the 
Knights of Labor inaugurated a crusade for the Sunday closing of barber shops. In 
Baltimore the Carriage Drivers' Association joined with the Undertakers' Association 
to pit vent Sunday funerals except in cases of necessity. In Reading, Pa., the bar- 
bers themselves attempted to enforce Sunday closing of barber shops. The extensive 
reduction of Sunday trains on the Pennsylvania Railroad, in 1886, was doubtless 
due in part to labor agitation. 

In New York, workingmen have made unpredecented efforts to secure emancipa- 
tion from Sunday work. Hatters, shoe salesmen, bakers, grocers' clerks, dry goods 
clerks, book-keepers, barbers, all made their protest against the needless Sunday 
work required of them, and secured several spasms of law enforcement, chiefly useful 
in two ways : First, in showing that the police can enforce good laws when they will ; 
second, that even the American Sabbath has been very seriously invaded by the need- 
less toil which has marched in on the heels of Sunday sport. 

In New York, as elsejvhere, workingmen are finding that where they require or 
allow their fellows to work on the Sabbath for their amusement, their own turn to 
work comes ere long. Casting out religion from the Sabbath they cast out rest. 
Every act of the workingmen in secularizing the Sabbath for recreation, in the ex- 
pressive words of another, " rivets the collar of Sunday labor more tightly around 
their necks." 

A quiet Sabbath forenoon of protected rest and worship can no more co-exist with a 
Sunday afternoon half-holiday, with beer and public amusements, than two hostile 
national governments can co-exist in these United States. 

The great reduction of Sunday trains by law in Connecticut is another significant 
item in the general reaction against increasing Sunday work. All over New England 
we hear the watchword, ''The barber's Sunday," another bitter cry from eeven- 
day toilers, demanding their rightful rest. The contradictory decisions in Massa- 
chusetts courts, on© declaring that shaving on Sunday at a barber shop is and 
another that it is not "a work of necessity," have prompted the suggestive remark 
that "justice," so far from being '' blind," can see two ways at once. There are many 
other illustrations, of this which suggest that the definition and enumeration of 
" works of necessity " should be as far as possible done by the legislature, not left 
to police courts. 

All efforts of workingmen to resist the invasion of the Sabbath by toil, while ad- 



I 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 119 

mitting amusement, have been and must be in vain, for^ the ground of tlie holiday 
Sundav is indefensible. 

Wliilo the center of the holiday Sniulay'.s position if3 weak in the lack of Divine au- 
thority, itsiianks are weak in their permissio)!, on the one side, of some public amuse- 
ments ; on the. other, of some forms of needless labor. The labor and business which 
the holiday Sunday permits by law is mostly that which ia supposed to be essential 
to public amusement. In order that others m:iy be amused, railroad men, newspaper 
men, bakers, butchers, tobacconists, confectioners, barbers, bootblacks, drivers, flor- 
ists, and in many cases, liquor dealers, are allowed to work their emploj^a seven days 
in a week. It is on the heels of the exceptions, and through the same breach in the 
wall, that every other form of toil come:^ into the Sabbath. And why shouldn't it ? 
If a man can not buy his Sunday cigars and caramels over night, why may he not in- 
sist on having his new shoes and new hat also on Sunday morning, "hot fi'om the 
griddle ?" 

It is a fact of history that wherever a breach has been made in the wall of the Sab- 
bath to let in Sunday concerts and the Sunday opening of museums, not only worse 
amusements but work also has come following after, because there is no defensible 
line of battle by which one public amusement (legal on other days) can be kept back 
while another public amusement, which stands on no higher footing before the law, 
though it may before the church, is permitted. Nor is there any place for defending 
the Sabbath against one form of needless work for gain, while another form of need- 
less work for gain is permitted. "Twice is he armed that hath his quarrel just," 
The holiday Sunday is not thus armed, for it is not impartial either in what he forbids 
or in what it permits. If a rich railroad corporation can use the Stibbath for works of 
gain, why not a poor hat-soller also ? If men may sell on the Sabbath cigars, news- 
papers, and candies, why not purer and more useful things also ? If a man can't 
wait for news until Monday morning, why should he wait for shoes? The law that 
allows the making and selling of daily newspapers on the Sabbath and forbids the 
making and selling of good boots, lacks equity, the very heart of true and effective 
law. Such law is a violation of law. By the law of equitable treatment all trade, all 
amusements, all work (save works of necessity and charity) should be prohibited, or 
none. Theaters are not willing to lose Sunday gains if saloons are allowed to be open. 
Hatters and clothiers will soon be claiming the day all over the East, as they have al- 
ready generally taken it in the West, on the ground that they have as good aright to 
make money on Sunday as tobacconists and confectionera. 

The law should not permit me to make another man work on the day of rest, that 
I may be amused. I should be required to find my rest in some way that will not 
sacritice another's. Only the ignorant will say in defense of Sunday trains, Sunday 
newspapers, Sunday mails, and ^unday sails: "The few must suffer for the good of 
the many." I find from carefully compiled statistics that in the United States more 
than two millions are in this slavery of needless Sunday work, and the number ia 
rapidly increasing. Every day some man has to choose between his salary and his 
Sabbath. 

Those Americans who would allow on the Sabbath the running of trains, the mak- 
ing and selling of newspapers, or any other works not clearly works of necessity, or 
of mercy, or of religion, have taken a position where they are exposed to a double 
enfilading fire ; first, from all who wish to continue other needless work on that day ; 
and, second, from all who wish to continue other public amusements on that day. 

There never was a sound argument for Sunday amusements; but in these days, 
when the movements for shorter hours of labor, and "early closing," and the Sat- 
urday half-holiday, are evciywhere multiplying the workmen's hours for week-day 
recreation, there is not left a plausible argument even for Sunday concerts and the 
Sunday opening of museums, much less for the " hell of the Sunday boat." The Sat- 
urday half holiday and early closing will achieve full success all the sooner if the 
capitalist is not ai)le to point to Sunday as a weekly holiday. Any defensible ground 
of Sabbath observance must include the Kouud Top of Sinai. \Ve must occupy and 
fortify the position that God's authority, as well as man's, is back of the Sabbath, 
commending it not to reason only, but to conscience also. This is the work of the 
Christian pulpit, the Christian press, and of Christian schools — the three chief con- 
servators of public conscience. 

The right wing of this defensible line of battle is a hill-top of equity — the impartial 
prohibition by tlie State and nation of all Sunday work except works of necessity 
and mercy. The left wing in this defensil)le lino of battle is another hill-top of 
equity — the impartial prohibition of all public amusements. 

Is the position I have thus indicated as the only defensible grounds of Sabbath 
observance impracticable? Nay, is is not even unreal. It is very near the position 
on which the only successful workingmen's defense of the Sabl)ath hai ever been con- 
ducted in Europe. While continental workingmen iiave vainly attempted to recap- 
ture their Sunday rest British workingmen have succ(\ssfully defended theirs by re- 
sisting the vanguard of the Sabbath's invaders, refusing even the opening of museums 



120 SUNDAY BEST BILL. 

in 188G, as often before. They see clearlyjthat there is no defensible position "between 
the Sunday opening of national museuraa and the Sunday opening of theaters, nor 
between the Sunday opening of theaters and the Sunday running of factories. 

It is vastly signillcant that the only country in Europe in which worlciijgtuen have 
not to a large extent lost their Sabbath rest, is one in which public conscience recog- 
nizes the divine authority of 'the day. 

What I have described is the only defensible ground of Sabbath observance, cen- 
tering in the heights of a public conscience that recognizes the day as of divine au- 
thority, with an impartial prohibition of all needless work on one fiank, and of all 
public amusements on the other; is more perfectly realized in Toronto than in any 
other large city of the world, and there proves itself both practical and popular. 

This city of 140,000 inhabitants, witji distances from center to circumference as 
great as even larger fcities, has every obstacle to a strict Sabbath observance 
which " modern civilization " is supposed by some to offer. But the obstacles are all 
overcome. The Toronto Sabbath ia " The barbers' Sunday," ** The printers' Sun- 
day," " The bakers' Sunday," *' The 'butchers' Sunday." The right to Sabbath rest 
is not taken even from the conductors and drivers of the etreet cars, the post-office 
employes and the printers of the daily papers. Barbers, grocers, batchers, bakers, 
tobacconists, confectioners, also rest. Telegraph, operators all rest, except ten at the 
central office. Druggists and milk dealers are free most of the day. The latter have 
resolved hereafter to make no delivery on the Sabbath in cold weather, as it is en- 
tirely unnecessary. Livery stables can legally be used only for sickness and church 
going, and it is expected, by the co-operation of the drivers themselves (who are li- 
censed and made responsible), that all pleasure-driving will be stopped, and nearly 
all the drivers get the whole day for rest, the few others detained for permitted work 
having part of the day. 

Christians of Toronto at least are considerate of their servants in their stables and 
at their tables. It is hard to prohibit the renting of boats to the poor while the rich 
man drivus about in Lis carriage. Three " through trains," kept up by American 
competition, is the most serious offense against Sabbath rest that one sees. It is out 
of control of the city authorities, the provincial law allowing Sunday trains starting 
in the United States to go through Canada to their destination. This sort of Sab- 
bath is kept up not alone out of regard for God's law, but also because it is found to 
be for the best good of men. Efforts to get Sunday horse-cars or Sunday papers have 
found no popular support and. utterly failed. Workingmen see that " the Sabbath 
■was made for man." Druggists think ours a "horriblo country" for men of their 
trade, in that even half of a Sabbath is not allowed them for rest. Toronto is '* a city 
sot on a hill," '* a light to the world," as to what can and should be done in all large 
cities in regard to Sabbath observance. If a city would not suffer from hot-boxes of 
socialism, let it give its workingmen, as Toronto does, early closing, Saturday half 
holidays, and Sabbath rest. 

On the issue of the battle for the Sabbath the fate of our country and of our Chris- 
tianity depends. Neither evangelical Christianity nor popular liberty ever thrived 
in a land of holiday Sundays, which are the allies of tyranny, infidelity and super- 
stition. A quiet Sabbath is the best school of liberty as well as of religion. 

Let us then hold at any cost — for it is easier to defend than to recapture — the only 
defensible ground of Sabbath observance — namely, that both the authority of God 
and the good of man require on that day the cessation of all needless work and of all 
public amusements. 

1 submit also, from my book, "The Sabbath for Man/' the closing 
section of the chapter on the question : 

ARE SABBATH LAWS CONSISTENT WITH XIBEETY. 

Sabbath laws are consistent with liberty in the same way as other laws for the 
protection of institutions deemed by the majority of the people ijnportant to the wel- 
fare of society, such as the setting apart of the Fourth of July and the Twenty- 
second of February for the culture of patriotism. 

Many of the foreign one-seventh of the population of the United States have no in- 
terest in the national holidays, and would prefer to pay their notes that come due on 
the Fourth of July on that day rather than on the previous one. They would also 
like to use the banks and courts on that day, and to be able to find public servants 
in their offices. But few of these guests would say that it was inconsistent with lib- 
erty for the native majority of the population to set apart these days for lessons in 
liberty. 

Most of this native majority, with a third of the foroign'population added, have an- 
other institutional day whose observance they regard aa eBsential to the preservation 
of the Eepublic— the Sabbath, 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 121 

Li"boTty forbids fhem to enforce upon any one the relisious features of the day.* 
Church- going is not required by any of the State laws, except those of Vermont and 
South Carolina, and these have neVer had a single enforcement and lie in ''desue- 
tude," but ought to be repealed for the sake of holding up to the people a law con- 
sistent with liberty in precept as well as in practice. Liberty allows the majority 
no right, and it has no disposition, to enforce its religion upon others. But inas- 
much as more than three-fourths of the population of the United States are members 
or adherents of Christian churches, and so accustomed to set apart the iirst day of 
each week for rest and religion, and inasmuch as it is the conviction of this mr.jority 
that the nation can not be preserved without religion, nor religion without the Sab- 
bath, nor the Sabbctth v/ithout laws, therefore Sabbath laws are enacted by the right 
of self-preservation, not in violation of liberty, but for its protection. " They aim 
simply to protect from disturbance those who observe the Sabbath as a day of rest 
and worship." 

These Sabbath laws are not Puritanical. If they were, it would no more be a valid 
argument against them than it is an argument against the American Constitution, its 
common schools, and its homes, that they are of "Puritan origin. But the main fea- 
tures of American Sabbath laws came from the i)Tedecessors and tlie persecutors of the 
Puritans. If there was to-day in the United States less reading of romance and more 
of history, speakers V70uld be laughed down for their ignorance whenever they quote 
the "Blue laws," except as a fiction. If the old law requiring people to go to church is 
Puritanic, how does it happen to be still on the books in so anti-Paritan a State as South 
Carolina? Before the word Puritan was invented England had Sabbath laws for- 
bidding labor, trade, festivities, games, and sports, and requiring church-going, and 
from these ante-Puritan laws, wliich were in force in America up to the Revolution, 
the Sabbath laws of the United States were chiefly patterned. Unpuritan English 
rulers and law-makers long ago recognized that the prevailing religion had aright to 
protection on its day of worship, but carried the law too far in requiring church-go- 
ing, which requirement the nineteenth century has canceled on both sides of the sea. 
But the nineteenth century, so far from canceling, confirms the essential features of 
Sabbath laws by re-enacting and re-afiarming them in the legislative and judicial as- 
semblies of its most enlightened nations. 

In a monarchy the chief perils are from witliout ; in a republic the only peril is of 
inward corruption. The repxiblics of Rome and Greece and Spain, and the former 
one in France, all died, not of wounds, biit of moral cancer. The devil can not cast 
a republic down from its high ©state by any external blow. He can only say, " Cast 
thyself down." If he can persuade the people to adopt the holiday Sabbath and put 
the saloon and the shop in place of the home and the church ; if he can stop the Sab- 
bath's weekly diffusion of intelligence and conscientiousness, and put frivolity and 
greed in its place, he will at length raise up a people among whom ballots will be 
given in exchange for beer and bank-bills. Even a Jew does not care to sell goods 
on credit in a town where there are no churches. Who would want to invest his 
property or to rear his family in a Sabbathless republic, with liberties as imperfect 
and as uncertain as those of France, whose ijolitical volcano is liable to eruption at 
any moment. Burke said it was easy to have freedom and to have government, but 
to have a frc-o government was very difficult. 

" Without roligiouy sanctions," says Professor Goldwin Smith, " men have never 
been able to live under a govornmeni; of law." And, we may add, that with them a 
good government may live forever. In the words of Earl Russell: " There is no ne- 
cessity in the nature of things that nations should die. History points to no people 
which, while strong in faith, in reverence, in truthfulness, in chastity, in frugality, 
in the virtues of the temple and of the hearth, has sunk into atrophy and decline. 
We may decide, therefore, that so long as moral energy fails not, the life of the na- 
tion will not fail." 

General morality is one of the necessities of life to a popular government, and sncli 
morality has never yet been secured except through churches and Sabbaths. Popu- 
lar government can not live by bread alone ; ib must have also morality and religion. 
" Despotism may govern without faith," said De Tocqueville, " but liberty can not." 
It was the conviction of this truth that forced Mirabcau, the eloquent orator of the 
French revolution, to exclaim, "God is as necessary as liberty to the French people." 
Another Frenchman, La Place, wrote: '* I have lived long enough to know, what at 
one time I did not believe, that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor with- 
out the eentimeuts of religion." 

These utterances have double force coming from France, the only nation that, hav- 
ing received the Sabbath, has ever legally and deliberately murdered the messenger 

* The American Sabbath Union and the Woman's Christian Toinperanco Union 
both by uTianimous votes have objected to even the word " promote" in the title of 
the Blair Sunday rest bill, with rclerencB to "the religious observance of the day," 
anil albt) in the closing sentcuco of the bill ; and the author of the bill has consented 
to Diio tha word '* protect " instead of promote " in the title. 



122 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

of God, and thus crushed the religious instinct of the people, which it did at the 
Revolution by appointing a tenth-day rest, thus bringing on the wreck of liberty in 
a *' reign of terror." Neglect of Sabbath rest produces not only personal but poli- 
tical insanity. De Tocqueville said to an American, when the American Sabbath 
was stricter than it is now, "France must have your Sabbath or she is ruined.'' It 
might be added that America must restore her Sabbath or she is ruined. 

The venerable historian Hon. George Bancroft, in 1884, wrote to the New York 
Christian Advocate his conviction of the inseparableness of liberty and religion, as 
follows : '^ Certainly our great united commonwealth is the child of Christianity ; it 
may with equal truth be asserted that modern civilization sprang into life with our 
religion ; and faith in its principles is the life-boat on which humanity has at divers 
times escaped the most threatening perils." 

Eeligion is, then, necessary to the preservation of the State ; but is the Sabbath 
necessary to the preservation of religion ? Voltaire answers: ''There is no hope of 
destroying the Christian religion so long as the Christian Sabbath is acknowledged 
and kept by men as a sacred day." The reverse is also true, that there is no hope of 
preserving it in any community where the Sabbath is not observed. Even a clergy- 
man, visiting in Venice, who had lost his reckoning of days, found through an Amer- 
ican friend whom he met at evening that he had unconsciously spent a Sabbath in 
sight-seeing, having observed no closing of shops or cessation of work or amusement 
to suggest that it was a holy day. This gives point to Calvin's saying, that " if the 
Lord's day was abolished the church would be in imminent danger of convulsion and 
ruin." 

At a recent gathering of Lutherans in Germany, Dr. Bauer, court preacher, began 
an address with the strong assertion that though Dr. Luther had declared the doctrine 
of justification by faith to be the doctrine of a standing or falling church, he could 
not regard the sanctification of the Sabbath as any less a ground pillar of the church 
and of our whole social life." 

Dr. Mark Hopkins, in an able address on "The Sabbath and free institutions," has 
laid down and proved the following propositions : " (1) A religious observance of the 
Sabbath would secure the permanence of free institutions. (2) Without such ob- 
servance such permanence can not be secured. (3) That the civil, as based on the re- 
ligious, Sabbath is an institution to which society has a natural right, precisely as it 
has to property." He declares that there has been no instance of a people that kept 
the Sabbath that has not been firee. He shows from history that " God has joined 
liberty with the Sabbath," that the Bible is God's educator for the conscience, and 
that the Sabbath is his appointed school-day for the race. History authorizes us to 
add that mental education is not enough to make good citizens. Ninety-four per 
cent, of the criminals of New York State are able to read. Although ignorance is 
the handmaid of vice, as learning is of piety, yet no degree of intellectual education 
can counteract the evils resulting from a lack of the moral education which the Sab- 
bath affords. "No republic has yet perished in which intelligence was not more 
general and higher at his overthrow than at its founding," Free governments can 
not go on without morality. In the words of Franklin, " What are laws without 
morals?" And, we may add, whence shall we get morals except from religion? 

Let Washington answer both questions. He says: "Reason and experience both 
forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious prin- 
ciple." To this agree the words of Justice McLean, of the Supreme Court of the 
United States : " Where there is no Christian Sabbath, there is no Christian morality ; 
and without this free institutions can not long be sustained." Hon. John Randolph 
Tucker, M. C, of Virginia, has ably enforced this same great truth : " Ah ! my friends, 
break down the fence of Christianity, and liberty and law and civilization will perish 
with it. I wish to testify my belief that the institutional custom of our fathers, in 
remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the conservator of their Christian 
religion, is the foundation of our political system and the only hope of American 
freedom, progress, and glory. Just in proportion as man is governed by his sense of 
right and duty, or by the religious principle in some form or other, he is capable of 
and fitted for duty. But, on the other hand, in proportion to his disregard of moral 
law or the law of conscience does the need of external power increase. Liberty must 
grow less, and power tend to despotism. When the constitution and laws of a coun- 
try, therefore, protect religion, they conserve that internal power over the man which 
saves liberty and makes despotism impossible." 

Sir John Sinclair wrote an essay against what he then considered a too strict and 
Puritanical observance of the Sabbath in Scotland. His friend, Dr. Adam Smith, al- 
though himself the apologist of Hume, said to him, "Your book, Sir John, is very 
ably composed, but the Sabbath as a political institution is of inestimable value in- 
dependently of its claims to divine authority." 

Lel5 us not call the Sabbath, in legal parlance, a dies non; British and American 
history prove it, even as a political institution, the day of days. 

"But," say some who admit that the state can not be preserved without religion, 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 123 

nor relij^ion wifhont a Sabbath, "the Sabbath may be preserved withont laws." 
France and Genuany answer, ''No.'^ Neither rest nor relio'ion can use the day to 
advantage withont legal protection against greed and passion. Where there are no 
Sabbath laws there is pracJically no Sabbath. 

Sabba'th laws for protecting the worshiping day of the prevailing religion from 
distnrbance. then, are vindicated as belonging to society's laws of seif-preservatiou. 

As courts have often decided, these Sabbath laws are not in violation of that much 
misunderstood article in the American Constitution : *' Congress shall make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." 
President Charles E. Knox, D. D., of the German Seminary at Bloomtield, N. J., in 
a very able paper on " The attitude of our foreign population toward the Sabbath," 
urges that this n;...iidment needs to be thoroughly expounded to tho foreign popula- 
tion of the United States. " It should be shown to them," he says, ''that v/hile Con- 
gress possesses no law-making power in respect to an establishment of religion, it may 
and does and always has passed laws which have respect to religion. It may and 
does and always has passed laws in respect to those phases of religious conviction 
which have to do with the self-preservation of the republic. Whatever malces the 
best citizen, Congress has a right to prescribe. Whatever attacks the vitalities of 
citizenship. Congress has a right to prohibit." 

It should bo shown to them also, that while liberty allows no state church, and can 
compel no worship, "Christianity is a part of the common law of the land," as the 
highest courts have often decided. That Christianity is interwoven with the entire 
structure and history of the American Government is shown by the following facts, 
among others : The pilgrims founded the nation through a desire for freedom to wor-^ 
ship God, and especially for freedom to keep the Sabbath holy. The Declaration of 
Independence recognizes the inalienable rights of citizens as proceeding from God. 

The articles of confederation of the States and the charter of the Northwestern 
Territory contained in their provisions for education and for charitable and reforma- 
tory institutions a recognition of the laws of religion. The convention for framing 
the Constitution was opened with prayer. The President annually proclaims to the 
entire nation a Day of Thanksgiving to God for His mercies. Upon some of the coins 
of the nation is engraved an expression of our trust in God. Each branch of the Gen- 
eral Government has its chaplain, and the Army and Navy are also supplied with 
chaplains as regularly commissioned ofi&cers. The President, members of Congress, 
and of the judiciary, governors of States, legislators, and other officials are sworn into 
office in the use of the Bible and by an appeal to the God of Christians. Witnesses 
before courts of law are required to make oath in the name of God that they will tell 
the truth. Churches and property nsed exclusively for places of worship are exempt 
from taxation. Ordained ministers of the Gospel are declared to be competent to sol- 
emnize marriage. The State provides religious instruction for the convicts in its 
prisons and for the youth in its reform schools. Wherever public schools have been 
established instruction in Christian morality has been enjoined. Nearly all the States 
prohibit secular labor, noise, and confusion on the Sabbath, and (^with certain recent 
exceptions) have always held that all civil contracts made upon that day are void. 
The Federal laws of the United States also recognize the Sabbath by forbidding 
distilling on that day, and by intermitting the studies in the national academies, and 
by counting out the Sabbatla from the ten days allowed the President for signing an 
act of Congress. 

American Sabbath laws do no injustice to those emigrants who do not believe in quiet 
Sabbaths; first, because they knew or might have known beforehand of the existence 
of these hiws, and are under no compulsion to come or remain unless they can do better 
in their adopted country with the Sabbath laws than elsewhere withoutthem ; second, 
because the Sabbath laws are one of the chief forces that make America a good place 
to emigrate to ; third, because the nine-tenths of the people who have tested the per- 
sonal and political value of the American Sabbath have some rights which the other 
tenth, chietiy composed of guests, are bound to respect ; fourth, because the Sabbath 
law, in the lansnage of the supreme court of California "leaves a man's religious 
belief and practice as free as the air he breathes." It only forbids the carrying on 
of certain kinds of business on a certain day in the week, and the day selected in de- 
ference to the feelings and wishes of a large majority of the community is the day 
commonly denominated the Christian Sabbath or Sunday. 

A man may worship the sun on Sunday if he pleases, only he can not legally do it 
by noisy excursions, because these interfere with the right of others to rest and quiet. 

Europe has no greater despotism of the few over the many than the Sabbath-dese- 
crators who have fled from its tyranny seek to establish in America. The one-tenth 
of population who want to make the Sabbath a day of noisy and demoralizing amuse- 
ments seek to set up a for(;ign oligarchy over the nine-tenths that have established a 
quiet Sabbath — the brazen despotism of a loud and low minority over a too compro- 
mising majority, who endanger liberty by concessions, for fear of being misunderstood 
in their methods of protecting it. In California thia oligarchy of foreign liquor- 



124 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

sellers has actually been allowed to repeal the Sabbath law as a " League of Freedom." 
This oppression of masses by margins in the name of liberty should be stopped. Am3* 
ricans have already changed the plans of national housekeeping too much at the dis- 
courteous dictation of the most disorderly of foreign visitors. Let those -who wish a 
Continental Sunday stay where it is. The United States want neither it nor its moral 
and political fruits. Monarchies can live, even though the masses are only animals 
and children, such as thoughtless Sabbaths make them, but in a republic the masses 
must be men, such as only quiet Sabbaths have ever been able to produce. 

But how is it consistent with liberty that those whose religion requires them to 
rest on the seventh day should be compelled by law to give up public business and 
public amusements on the first day also? 

The case of Jewish emigrants is not as difficult as many have thought. Every 
Je\i who determines to come to Great Britain or the United States knows, or might 
know, that, vfhile his religion forbids him to do business on the seventh day, the 
laws of the cointries to which he proposes to go forbid the same on the first day. If 
he can not do more business in five days in Great Britain or in the United States 
than in sis days elsewhere, he is free to remain elsewhere. If, when he has come 
into Great Britain or the United States, he finds by experiment that " a conscientious 
Jew can not make a living," the world is all before him to choose where he will dwell. 
Jews seem to forget that their Mosaic law compelled not only native Israelites to 
rest on the seventh day, but also their servants, native or foreign, and *' the stran- 
ger within their gates." It is passing strange that a people whose ancient law com- 
pelled the Gentile worshipers of the sun who happened then to be in Palestine, 
although they kept the first day of the week for their worship, to rest on the seventh 
day also, out of respect to the prevailing religion, should object to Great Britain and 
the United States following the example of their fathers, only making the rule work 
the other way. 

The only nations that have not mobbed and robbed the Jews are those which have 
forbidden them to trade on the Christian Sabbath, that the people might receive 
their weekly lessons in justice. 

It is not sufficiently emphasized that the Jew is left absolutely free to observe the 
seventh day. He can close his shop ; he can refuse to work. It would not be reason- 
able for legislatures to compel the ninety-nine one-hundreths of the population who 
do not regard Saturday as a sacred day to stop business for the less than 1 per cent, 
who do. If this were done, the Mohammedan immigrants of the future would soon 
be asking for laws halting industry on their sacred Friday also. 

As the national welfare of the Jews called for a legally-protected Sabbath, which 
the minority of other faiths were not allowed to disturb, so America's national wel- 
fare calls for similar laws, in which the Jew must play the part of *'the stranger 
within the gates." Rabbi Gottheil, of New York, though by no means pleased with 
Christian Sabbath laws that prevent the Jewish peddler from selling his goods to 
''working people on that day," yet says, "We are willing to submit to reasonable 
restrictions upon our liberty for the sake of our Christian neighbors." 

That last admission is exactly the American theory of Sabbath laws, the only differ- 
ence of opinion being as to what "restrictions" are "reasonable," a question which 
the majority, of course, must answer for itself. 

The laws of many of the United States and the customs of all allow, what Jewish 
laws never allowed, that the stranger, who keeps another day as holy time, may en- 
gage in private labor on the national Sabbath, provided it be done in such a manner 
as not to disturb the community in its rest and worship. The Jew may not keep his 
shop open, because trade is a public disturbance of the general rest, and involves per- 
sons who do not keep Saturday as holy-time ; but he may work in his home in mak- 
ing clothes or otherwise, and rely upon the fact that he regularly intermits such work 
on Saturday as his defense in case of prosecution. The majority have been very 
generous with the Jews in their laws, and still more in their practice, but this gener- 
osity has not been reciprocated. No people have so persistently violated the Sabbath 
laws as Jews of the baser sort, who would sacrifice the interests of the nations which 
have most heartily befriended them for their own private gains. They are not will- 
ing to lose a day's profits per week to perpetuate in their adopted countries the insti- 
tution of a regularly-recurring day of rest in each week, which they believe necessary 
to a nation's perpetuity— the neglect of which, according to their own prophets, was 
the chief cause of their own national ruin. 

If the Jews could but take the scales of personal selfishness from their eyes, they 
would rejoice to bear some slight loss in aiding the Sabbath-keeping nations in per- 
petuating substantially the same institution as that whose faithful observance was 
the secret of their former national prosperity. 

A few of the better class of Jews rise to this consistency. A Jewish mayor enforced 
the Christian Sabbath law in Jacksonville, Fla., and the Jewish deputy Lasker sup- 
ported, in the German Reichstag, a bill reducing the mail distributions on Sunday 
in Berlin to one. The lower grades of Jews, such as have robbed the less shrewd 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 125 

peasants of Russia acd Germany by wliolesale, and have come to Encclniul and America 
for the same purpose, such as habitually violate the Christian Sal)bath laws, are not 
a kind of immigrants that should he enticed by concessions and special privileges. 

Dr. L. Wintuer, of Brooklyn, a Jewish rabbi, whose synagogue I have visited on the 
Jewish Sabbath with pleasure and profit, has sent me an abstract of a recent lecture 
on the Sabbath which questions of mine led him to give to his people and their Gentile 
neighbors. In these notes I find three interesting and significant admissionB: (1) 
*' With a great number of Israelites the Saturday Sabbath is not a day of rest, aa^the 
commercial circumstances of the present are such that Jewish business men here and 
in Europe are obliged to keep their places of business open on Saturday." (2) " Sun- 
day morning lectures have [therefore] been instituted in several Jewish cor.oroga- 
tions, as in Chicago, Philadelphia, and perhaps some other places," a movement which 
even the conservative Jewish Messenger, of New York, is advocating. (3) He hopes a 
compromise may be made between Christians and Jews by agreeing on *' a neutral day 
in the middle of the week " as the Sabbath for all, showing that he is willing to give 
up Saturday and take some other common day, his national prejudice again8t the 
Christiao first-day Sabbath being his only reason for preferring the third or fourth 
day to the first — a prejudice which few would claim was an adequate reason why a 
wliole nation should change its day of worship and rest. These threo ad missions 
suggest that by influences now at work all difliculties in the relation of Sabbath 
laws to the Jews will soon be self-adjusted. 

The one or two very small sects of Christians who worship on Saturday, holding as 
they do that the observance of one day in seven for rest and worship is necessary for 
personal and political self-preservation by a law of God as old as the race, are not 
less inconsistent ihan the Jews in seeking to break down such an observance in all 
who will not observe the day which their method of Bible interpretation has pointed 
out. The tendency of legislatures and executive officers toward those who claim to 
to keep a Saturday Sabbath is to overleniency rather than cverstrictness. For in 
stance, the laws of Rhode Island allow Seventh-Day Baptists, by special exception, 
to carry on public industries on the first day of the week in Hopkinton and Westerly, 
in each of which places they form about one-fourth of the population. This local- 
option method of Sabbath legislation, if generally adopted, would make not only 
each State but, the nation also, a town heap, some places having two half-Sabbaths, 
as at Westerly, to the great confusion and injury of interstate commerce and even 
of local industry. Infinitely less harm is done by the usual policy, the only consti- 
tutional or sensible one, to let the insignificantly small minority of less than one in 
a hundred, whose religious convictions require them to rest on Saturday (unless their 
work is of a private character such as the law allows them to do on Sunday), suifer 
the loss of one day's wages rather than have the other ninety-nine suffer by the 
wrecking of their Sabbath by public business. 

Instead of reciprocating the generosity shown toward them by the makers of Sab- 
bath laws, these seventh day Christians expend a very large part of their energy in an- 
tagonizing such laws, seeking by the free distribution of tracts and papers to secure 
their repeal or neglect, seemingly on the policy of rule or ruin. They persuade very 
few to keep the sev^enth day ; tbey only succeed in confusing the consciences of many 
about the first. They increase the desecration of the Lord's Day, but not the hallow- 
ing of Saturday. 

Perhaps the Saturday half-holiday movement, which is well established in England 
and well started in Am.crica, may afford partial relief to the seventh-day people of all 
kinds in their conscient ious perplexities, as they stand halting every Saturday be- 
tween worship and work. We rejoice in the prospect that overworked Americans, 
whose products .-ire cheapened by overproduction, will ere long very generally add a 
large part of Saturday (in Pitca'irn's Island, ''The Paradise of the Pacific," it is the 
whole) to the legal rest day, thus greatly improving the Sabbath by bringing people 
to it less jaded, giving the people a half-holiday with the whole Holy Day, and inci 
dentally relieving the few seventh-day worshipers from the great moral peril to 
which they are exposed by their weekly battles between conscience and commerce. 

Meanwhile it should be remembered by all who do not feel bound to cease from 
public labor and trade and amusements on the first day of the week because of any 
other Bible commands that they are bound to do so in Great Britain and America by 
the passages in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian's Bible that require obedience to 
"the powers that be," except when their laws break God's laws, which can no more 
be said of the six-day laws than of "ten-hour laws," since Sabbath laws require no 
man to worship on any day. 

Sabbath laws arc consistent with liberty in that they are laws for the prevention 
of cruelty to animals, in that they are laws of health, in that they are laws for in- 
creasing the national wealth, in that they are laws for harmonizing the relations of 
capital and labor, in that they are laws for the protection of the liomo, in that they 
are laws for the prevention of crimo, la that they are laws for the protection of one 



126 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

of tlie chief liistorio institutions of the nation, in that they are, in short, laws of 
national self-preservation. 

These planks form a platform on which all who believe in the utility of a quiet 
Sabbath can staud together in its defense ; those who believe it rests for its authority 
on the church or on natural law, as well as those who recognize it as having also the 
authority of the New Testament, or^of the Old, or of both. How firmly a Unitarian can 
stand on this platform may be seen from the following letter of Thomas A. Hill, D. 
D., ex-president of Harvard University : *' You must be aware that the Unitarians 
prefer, first of all, freedom in private judgment, and neither I nor any other man can 
say, with authority, what the views of Unitarians are. Yet they have been,80 far as 
my knowledge goes (and I have been deeply interested in them for fifty years), nearly 
unanimous in basing the observance of Sunday upon its intrinsic value "and not upon 
the Fourth Commandment. They have reverently and firmly held that Sunday has 
been a more blessed day to the Christian Church than the Sabbath was to the Jews. 
While, therefore, they have deprecated the views and eiforts of Sabbatarians, they have 
with equal earnestness deprecated any opening of Sunday to secular pursuits and mere 
amusements. For ray own part my opinion is very decided and my feeling very strong 
in both directions — first, for freedom from undue restraint on Sunday ; and, secondly, 
for freedom from anything that could shock or disturb a thoroughly Christian commu- 
nity. I remember the earnestness with which a lovely old Spaniard said to me, ' When 
I first came to New England I thought your Sunday was a very gloomy day, but now 
it is the moist blessed and joyous day of the v^eek to me.' The doctrine of Roger Will- 
iams, that the civil magistrate has no authority over offenses against the first table, is 
worthy of all acceptance ; but it must be interpreted and applied with common sense. 
The Mormon is not to claim, under it, % right to bigamy and polygamy ; nor the rail- 
road and the theater managers a right to run excursion trains and have ball matches 
and opened theaters on Sunday, The State has a right to protect the morals of 
the community. It may not punish me for refusing to believe that the observance 
of Sunday is required by the word spoken on Sinai, but it may and it should punish me 
if I by any overt act attempt to injure and overthrow the customs of our Christian 
society, which make Sunday a day of rest from manual labor, and a day appropriated 
to the teaching of religion and morality. Freedom can not eudure without virtue, 
nor virtue without religion ; and virtue and religion are interests too important, 
even in their effect on social order and civil liberty, not to demand a weekly day of 
attention to them. The voice of history is emphatic : Make Sunday a holiday in- 
stead ^of a holy day, and you infallibly injure public morality and destroy the safe- 
guards of public liberty." 

As the railroad train speeds across the country it stops ever and anon, not merely 
to take and leave passengers, but also to cool its wheels and to have them examined, 
that any crack or flaw may be discovered in time to prevent disaster, and that the 
passengers themselves may enjoy their joumsy the more by the occasional change and 
airing. So amid our American life, with all ilia conflicts, commercial, political, and 
social, we need to call a pause as often as one day in seven, that our machinery and 
our animals and our own bodies and minds may rest ; that we may start again in our 
week refreshed by the change, and encouraged by the thoughts and words that have 
come to us at our sacred resting-places ; saved also from perils by the examination 
which such times allow in our moral life. To give up the Sabbath would be to de- 
stroy our national progress with hot boxes of ignorance and vice, and broken wheels 
of immorality and financial disaster. 

History proves that while " a holiday Sabbath," as Hallam has said, " is the ally of 
despotism," a Christian Sabbath is the holy day of freedom. 

Mrs. Bateham. I wish, in behalf of the Woman^s Temperance Union, 
to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and all the Senators for your kindness in 
gran tin, ^ us this hearing. 

The Chairman. There is no one else who wishes to say anything, and 
the hearing is now closed. 

Accordingly, at 4 o'clock and 15 minutes p. m., the committee ad- 
journed. 



APPENDICES. 



Appendix A. 

ADOPTION BY AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR. 

Saint Louis, Mo., DeccmUr 15, 1888. 
Committee on Education and Lahor of the United States of America : 
The American Federation of Labor, at its session to-day, adopted the tbllowiug: 
Resolved, That the Auierican Federation of Labor is in hearty sympathy with any 
legitimate movement inaugurated by the American Sabbath Union, the object of 
which is to lighten the burden of those who toil. 

Samuel Gompeks, 
President American Federation of Lahor. 



Appendix B. 

substance of argument presented to senate committee by 

james vincent, sr. 

VIGOROUS PROTEST AGAINST THE ADOPTION OF THE BLAIR BILLS. 
[Chicago Sentinel, December 20.] 

May 21, 1888, Senator Blair introduced a bill *^To secure to the people the enjoy- 
ment of tke first day of the week, commonly known as the Lord's Day, as a day of 
rest, and to promote its ol)servance as a day of religious worship." 

The same gentleman also introduced May 25, 18d8, a joint resolution, "Proposing 
an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting an establishment 
of religion and free public schools." 

These measures have aroused the antagonism of our old and highly esteemed friend 
James Vincent, sr., of Tabor, Iowa, who sent to the Senate committee the following 
argument, a copy of which he kindly furnishes the readers of The Sentinel : 

Gentlemou, the first of these measures, known to you as S. 2933, but popularly known 
throughout the country as the " Sunday law," while it ostensibly proposes to *' secure 
to the people the eujoyment of the first day of tho week, commonly known as the 
Lord's Day, as a day of rest, and to promote its observance as a day of religious wor- 
ship," it is a direct thrust at, and menace to, civil and religious liberty, and is so in- 
tended on the part of those urging on tho honorable Senator to push its passage. 

Tho second, or ''joint resolution," proposes an amendment to tho Constitution of 
the United States, the first and second sections of which are as follows: 

"Sec. 1. No State shall ever make or maintain any law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 

"Sec. 2. Each State in this Union shall establish and maintain a system of free 
public schools adequate for tho education of all children living theroiii* between the 
ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, in the common branches of k)iowledge, and 
in virtue, morality, and the principles of tho Christian religion. But no money 
raised by taxation imposed by law, or any money or other property or credit belong- 
ing to any municipal organization, or to any State, or to the United States, shall ever 
be appropriated, applied, or given to the use or purposes of any school, institution, 
corporation, or person, whereby instruction or training shall be given in the doctrines^ 
tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances peculiar to any sect, denomination, organ 

127 



128 SUNDAY KEST BILL. 

ization, or society, being, or declaring to be, religious in its character. Nor shall 
such peculiar doctrines, tenets, beliefs, ceremonials, or observances be tanght or in- 
culcated in the public echools." 

Gentlemen : I see nothing in the "joint resolution" that I feel called upon to notice at 
this time saving that clause which I have had put in italics purposely to direct your 
attention to. 

But is it that I object to "morality and virtue" being inculcated in our common 
schools that I object to the aforesaid clause ? By no means. I would rather strongly 
approve of inculcating them. But they are linked with ''the Christian religion," a's 
if virtue and morality could not be incalculated without it, and that is the ground 
taken by a large number, if not all, of the religious sects called Christian. 

I present this argument to you, not so much because it represents my own views, 
but because I know that the great majority of the citizens of the United States coin- 
cide with them, and the only reason why your committee is not overwhelmed with 
protests against these measures is because comparatively few know that they are 
before you for your action. It is said there wiil be presented to Congress petitions 
containing two or three millions of signatures urging favorable action on these meas- 
ures. 

Gentlemen, if three or four million signatures is all that can be obtained to such 
petitions, obtained as they have been, silently, so as not to call attention and thereby 
provoke counter petitions, the agents to whom the petitions have been intrusted umst 
have been very lazy. For, take this nation as a whole, there could be easily obtained ten 
or twenty million more of signatures to these measures ; because it is afact, the people 
have been educated not to doubt, or even inquire into, but to do what their religious 
teachers require of them ; but once let them get an inkling of the far-reaching and 
despotic character and designs of these measures, there would not be one in twenty 
thousand of the population, the religious population included, who would begin to 
allow themselves to be drawn into their support. Hence these few boasted millions 
of signatures have been obliged to be obtained surreptistiously. 

I said comparatively few of the entire population are aware that these measures 
are before you for your action. When I was in Chicago last August I made a spe- 
cialty of ascertaining, within the limits of my intercourse with the people, to what 
extent the people were aware of these measures. I not only did not find a single in- 
dividual that knew of it, but I subjected myself more than once to ^eing regarded as 
the dupe of some designing person who had seen that I was green enough to be im- 
posed on by such a statement. But when I assured them that the measures were before 
you, and named the honorable senator from New Hampshire as the promoter of them 
on behalf of ' designing men, there was such scorn manifested as words can not ex- 
press. As I would point the crowded street cars carrying their teeming thousands to 
ihe parks, and to men who were working when work was necessary, but would be 
made a grand offense by ecclesiastical law, and asked how they thought Sunday laws 
and Christian compulsory education would work in that one city, I will refrain from 
giving you the epithets that were applied under the imputee of the moment to men 
who could be vicious enough in the nineteenth century to drive this nation by law 
back to the experiences of the Middle Ages. 

What, then, are the views of the great majority of citizens of this country, whom 
I presume to represent before you ? Simply that the state has nothing whatever to 
do with teaching ''the principles of the Christian religion," any more than it has 
with teaching the principles of Free Masonry or Odd Fellowship. For how are the 
"principles of the Christian religion" to be taught unless they are set forth authori- 
tatively? What are the "principles of the Christian religion?" Your committee 
will see at a glance that these principles will have to be set out in order and autbori- 
tatively before they can be taught by law. 

Your committee does not need to be informed that in the United States there are 
several hundred different religious sects, and nearly all Christian. Nov*, if the prin- 
ciples of the Christian religion can be set out in order so as to gain the sanction and 
support of all classes of persons who claim to bo religious, including freethinkers 
and spiritualists, I will have no objections to offer, but so long as these are left out, 
seeing they are as much interested in our common-school system as others are, I must 
protest against a one-sided or loose statement aa to what constitute the "principles 
of the Christian religion." 

It may be urged that free-thinkers and spiritualists are infidels. Granted, and so are 
all the hundreds of religious sects infidels. An infidel means an " unbeliever ;" that 
is all there is to the term; not necessarily to the Christian religion, but any man is 
an infidel who is an "unbeliever" in the faith of another. Thoso who separated 
from the Roman Church and organized the Protestant Episcopal Church were infidels 
to the Romish system or faith, and were so regarded by that church. Those who 
seceded from the Episcopacy and formed the Presbyterian Church were infidel to the 
Episcopacy, and so on right through. Every sect in existence is " infidel " to the 
sect from which it seceded and to all other sects, for the :roason that they are " unbe- 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 129 

lievers" of vrhatthey believe ; that -wlierein they differ is to them esi^^ntial to a right 
understandiuo-of what '' Christian principles" are. 

It is phiiiily to he seen theu that this "joint resolution," while it apparently sec kh 
to disestablish religion from the state, is the very thing to necessitate a nnion of 
church and state, for the '^ principles of the Christian religion" can not be taught 
unless they are authoritatively laid down, and there is no authority short of the state 
that can order such a compendium; hence the union of church and state is necessary 
"before Christian principles can be taught in our public schools. And yet, the meas- 
ure before you says that no money is to be paid to the support of any schools which 
teach doctrines peculiar to any sect. Is it not plain in the face of that ''joint reso- 
lution" that the ultimate aim is to squelch oat this vast army of sects, and by com- 
pulsion inaugurate another inquisition— a Protestant inquisition? 

A few years since my attention was called to a statement made from the pulpit 
that '' on'r penitentiaries are tilled with infidels." I resolved to test its truth or false- 
hood. I had printed questions in blank form for answers, inquiring as to the number 
of convicts, their sex, age, education, religious training, and affiliations, and ^ent one 
to each executive of the States and Territories, to be placed in the hands of the 
proper officers to be tilled out. The result showed that 90 per cent, of the iumat^^s 
of our penitentiaries had been educated in the " principles" of the Christian religion, 
and that, too, in the various Sunday schools, whilo there were only three infidels out 
of the many thousands of convicts, 

In 1883 Mrs- Dr. Severance stated in a public lecture that there were seven hundred 
ministers of the Gospel in our State penitentiaries. 

With such facts as these, what becomes of the assertion that " morality and virtue " 
can not be taught'aside from teaching the '' principles of the Christian religion?" 

If " morality and virtue" are to be taught in our public schools, and taught by teach- 
ing '* the principles of the Christain religion," it is easy to see what necessity there is 
for an amendment to the Constitution, that there may be an authorized version of Chris- 
tian principles, with pains and penalties for any departure therefrom, or for advocacy 
of any principles not authoritatively laid down. 

Your committee will not consider yourselves behind the vast millions who can see 
that the proposed amendment to the Constitution, taken in connection with the pro- 
posed education and labor bill, is a direct and bold attack on religious freedom. 

The world has^ad enough of religious persecution and intolerance. An inquisi- 
tion such as the leaders of this measure must contemplate would be no less arbitrary 
and ferocious through Protestants than were the leaders of the Komish Inquisition. 
The system is the same. Koman Catholics claim that theirs is the true Christian sys- 
tem ; Protestants claim that theirs is the true Christian system, and we can easily 
judge how far short a Protestant Inquisition would be of the Romish, by witnessing 
the despotic power exercised by Protestants so far as power is granted them already. 
Give them the aid of the state and there would be no end to religious persecutions. 

I know not who are urging the honorable Senator to push these two measures, but 
I shall not be ftir wrong when I express the belief that they are directly or indirectly 
associated with what is called the "National Reform" and kindred associations. 

Permit me to cite to you a foot-note from page 373 of Gibbon's " Ilisfcory of Chris- 
tianity." Writing of the Council of Rimini, the one next succeeding that of Nice, the 
writer says : 

"All lovers of truth must regret, whatever belief they may entertain, that the 
fathers of the early Christian church should thus descend to disgraceful misrepresen- 
tation and positive fraud. Aud this wicked conduct was not the exception in this 
particular Council of Rimini, but +he established, universal custom. Creeds were 
invented aud successfully established by means that would disgrace a modern polit- 
ical caucus. Scriptures were interpolated; authorities were forged; the venal were 
purchased; the ignorant were cajoled, and this was done in the name of, and for the 
advancement of Christiauity." 

Permit me to call your attention to the language of President Seelye, of Amherst 
College, in the Forum, July number, 1886, if I remember rightly. He says: 

"Religions instruction of a people is indispensable to theirVery existence. The 
lamily will not provide the religious instruction needed, and, indeed, can not do it." 

Now, mark what he says further: 

"The church is confessedly not doing this work, and unless you give it the ubiquity 
and power of the state tlie church neither can nor will do it." 

If this langu;}ge does not contemplate a union of church and state, it is difficult to 
understand what the meaning really is. 

But the most renuirkable passage in President Seelye's article is that which I have 
already said looks to religious terror and persecution. He says : 

"The state should provide for insi ruction in the gospels for its own preservation; if 
ihe conscience of the subjects approve, icell; if not, the slate will be cautious hat couratjeoua 
also, and, if it is wise, it will not falter." 

1 put the important portion oi' his language in italics. 

S. Mis, 43 9 



130 SUNDAY RES'i BILL. 

Did Ignatius Loyola ever use language more clearly betokening religious tyranny 
than this language of aProfcestaut president of a college? Give sucli men but the 
''ubiquity and power of the state," and to what lengths of usurpation and persecu- 
tion would they not go ? 

Such language may be regarded as imprudent. Not at all is it imprudent. When 
men are advocating religious tyranny, they should be l^pld and honest enough to ad- 
vocate just what they think. And I reproduce President Seelye's opinion of whatthe 
state should do, because his name stands at or near the head of the leaders of the 
National lieform Association, the association, if I mistake not, that is urging the 
honorable Senator to engineer these measures for them, as a means to put 'n their 
power to inaugurate a thorough system of religious persecution. 

In respect to the Sunday rest, one of the reasons assigned for its necessity is, that 
those who wish to worship shall be able to do so " without disturbance." Your com- 
mittee are aware that in nearly all, if not all, of our States and Territories there are 
already laws protecting from disturbance all who desire public worship. Then why 
clamor for more laws? It is that the public may be deprived of the only means that 
multitudes of them have of enjoying themselves, and instead of being permitted to 
go out to the parks and other pleasure resorts on Sunday, to stop running cars, and 
then by the aid of oppressive laws, to drive people into churches. That is the literal 
interpretation of the language " and to promote its observance (the so-called Sunday) 
as a day of religious worship." 

If the clergy are so concerned for the souls of the people, why do they not do as it 
is said Christ and his disciples did ? He told them to go to the people, and went him- 
self, not to come to them. No large salaries did he hold out to theni as a temptation 
to preach, for they were not to own so much as two coats apiece. 

Gentlemen, there is something radically wrong in our modern Christian system- 
and I believe you will second the opinion I here express, that a system of religion 
that is so weak in itself that it has to invoke the aid of the state to force it on the 
people is a very poor regenerator, and not much good is to be expected from it at any 
time or under any circumstances. 

In respect to the honorable Senator's connection with these two measures, I express 
the opinion that he is moved to assist those urging him more out of respect for that 
confidence which he feels we ought to repose in men of their profession than for any 
necessity he himself sees for them. ® 

But the very measures themselves and the persistency and the bitter spirit in which 
they are urged condemn them as being the offspring of men as far removed from 
sympathy with the panting heart of man for means of progress and improvement, 
and real intelligence and growth towards a perfect manhood, and a grand and noble 
citizenship, as the North Pole is from the South. 

And in behalf of the toiling millions whose intellectual and moral growth these 
measures are designed to check by an unsympathetic and tyrannical priesthood, I 
beg your committee to pause ere you recommend measuues fraught with such misery 
and mischief and persecution as these measures are. And I beg you further, earn- 
estly and respectfully, to stand in the gap and not permit the people of this grand Re- 
public to be driven by force of law one single step in the direction of a religious 
tyranny. 



' Appendix 0. 
sunday ob see vance. 

Noies of a hearing lefore tlie Commitiee on Education and Lalor, United States Senate, 
Friday, April 6, 1888, on the petitions praying for the passage of legislation piroUhiting 
the runnivg of mail-trains, interstate trains, and the drilling of United States troops on 
Sunday, and other violations of the Sahhath. 

Washingtoist, Friday, April 6, 1888. 

The Chairman (Senator Blair). This hearing is called to consider a very large 
number of petitions, aggregating many thousands, from all parts of the country, and 
from the best influences in the country, addressed to Congress, praying lor legisla- 
tion against needless Sunday work in the Government service and interstate com- 
merce. The petitions are in triplicate. One, regarding Sunday mails, is addressed 
to Congress in these words : 

''We, the undersigned, citizens of the United States, hereby respectfully petition 
vour honorable bodies to pass a law instructing the Postmaster-General to make no 
further contracts which shall include the carriage of the mails on the hrst day o± the 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 131 

week, and to provide that liereafter no mail matter sliall bo collected or distributed 
on that day." 

The second petition, regarding interstate Sunday trains, is addressed to Congress 
in these words : 

"\Ve, the undersigned, citizens of the United States, respectfully petition your 
honorable bodies to forbid 'interstate commerce' on the first day of the week by 
railroad trains." 

The thir<l, regarding Sunday parades, addressed as before, reads as follows: 

"We, the nndersigned, citizens of the United States, respectfully petition your 
honorable bodies to forbid military drills, musters, and parades of United States ca- 
dets, soldiers, and marines on the first day of the week in times of peace, as interfer- 
ing not only with the soldier's right to the day of rest, but also with his rights of 
conscience." 

Most of the petitions are in these words, and, embracing as they do questions of 
conscience aiid of the industrial condition of the people, they have been sent to the 
Committee on Education and Labor for consideration. They are presented through 
the cfTorts of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union primarily and chiefly. 

I have here a communication from Mrs. J. C. Bateham, of Painesville, Ohio, who is 
the national superintendent of the department of Sabbath observance in the National 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 

Not being able to be present, she sends this written communication, epitomizing 
and embodying the substance of what she would like to say to the committee on 
this occasion it she could be present. I will read the communication. She writes as 
follows: 

"To the Seiiaie Committee on Education and Labor: 

"IToxoEED Sirs: In behalf of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 
I have the honor to present to your attention a petition to the Senate and House of 
Eepresentatives, which is somewhat remarkable. 

'• It is impossible to accurately judge of the numbers represented by memorials from 
large bodies, but a careful estimate in this instance shows that upwards of a million 
of citizens have directly or through their representatives signed the petitions referred 
last winter to youj: honorable body for legislation against needless Sunday work in 
Government service and interstate commerce, and this winter petitions from many 
thousand more have been added. 

" Multitudes ofthese petitioners have signed theirnames; the largest share are voters, 
and are among the most wise and discreet, the most patriotic and influential, of our 
citizens. The names are worth your study. The legislation asked by so large a por- 
tion of our intelligent citizens must be considered by them very important, and in 
their behalf and in behalf of those who sufi'er from the present state of things I am 
instructed to outline the legislation asked and the reasons therefor. 

" We ask for legislation in three distinct lines, yet closely connected : For the aboli- 
tion of Sunday mails, Sunday interstate commerce, and Sunday parades. We ask them 
all on the broad ground that it is for the best good of our country that the Sabbath 
bo maintained as a day of rest. Doubtless the largest share of your petitioners be^ 
lleve, first of all, that we are bound so to maintain it because God commands it, and 
His commands are disobeyed at our peril, but we confine ourselves to asking it on. 
humanitarian grounds. 

" History teaches that the most prosperous nations are those that regard the Sab- 
bath. Science and physiology add their testimony that man's physical nature needs 
one day In seven for rest. It is the eminent French political economist Michel Che- 
valier, who said: ' Let us observe Sunday in the name of hygiene.' It is a law of 
body and brain that labor must be followed by rest, and able physicians declare that 
our business men are suffering greatly, and many of them dropping off suddenly or 
becoming victims of sottenlng of the brain, from the steady excitement and pressure 
of business life, and need an enforced rest of one day each week. We ask it in their 
names and that of their families. 

" We ask It In the name of the laboring classes, over half a million of w^hom are now 
deprived of their Inherent and sacred right to a day of rest and a day for worship 
-because of these three evils that are under Government control. Many of them have 
earnestly besought of us this aid, and their picas are pathetic. * Wo want a day at 
home with our families,' say they, * and we greatly need a weekly day of rest, but 
we are powerless to obtain It.' 

'' Wo consider it the duty of Government to protect the weak, and such are these ; 
they can not help themselves. The right of rest for each requires a law of rest for all. 

"Let Government but take the action we ask, and courts and corporations will soon 
range themselves on the same side. We believe no better step could be taken towards 
suppression of socialism, riots, and crime than by securing, as far as Government has 
the power, a weekly day of rest. 

*• Youi petitioners consider Sunday mail entirely unnecessary, slnco Toronto, Edin- 



132 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

hiirg, and other large cities, and even London has discontinned them, and we ask 
for a law that shall ibrbid the transportation or distribution of mails on the first day 
of the week, thus liberating 150,000 post-office clerks from unwilling labor on the 
Sabbath, giving the enforced rest needed by business men, and throwing the almost 
unl)ounded. influence of Government in favor of one of the most hygienic and benefi- 
cent measures ijossibie, namely, the preservation of the Sabbath as a weekly day of 
rest. 

" We ask, too, for a law requiring railroad companies to move no trains except of 
perishable commodities on the first day of the week. 

" Most of the Sunday railroading is in criminal violation of the civil laws of the 
States, who are yet com]3arative]y powerless in the matter, because of its character as 
interstate commerce. It is also a gross violation of the rights of the people to still- 
ness and quietr, especially during the hours of public worship, and its influence is un- 
dermining and destroying the blessings of our social, civil, and religious institutions. 

*' Moreover, it has been ascertained by careful correspondence with railway ofidcials* 
that 400,000 railway employ <^s are by the Sunday trains of this country deprived of 
their Saljbath rights and privileges. For these, our fellow-citizens, bound down by 
enforced labor without sufficient rest, till our very lives as well as property are en- 
dangered because of overtaxed body and nerve as well as by the discontent and bit- 
terness engendered, we appeal for this law. 

"Lastly, following in the wake of France and other countries that are in advance 
of us in such legislation, we ask that cadets, soldiers, and marines of the United States 
be relieved in times of peace from all military drills, musters, and parades on the first 
day of the week, thus securing to them their rights of conscience and their day of 
rest. 

" We thank you for this gracious hearing, and being unavoidably detained person- 
ally, we are glad to leave the matter in other and abler hands. 

''Mrs. J. C. Bateham, 
^^Superintendent Sablath Observance Department N. W. C. T. U." 



ADDRESS OF HBV. "WILBUR P, CRAFTS. 

The Chairmaist. Rev. V/iibur F. Crafts, of K'ew York, will now address the commit- 
tee on the subject of the petitions. 

Mr. Crafts. Mr. Chairman and Senators of the committee, I speak in behalf of the 
petitioners at the request of the efficient Sabbath-observance superintendent whose 
statement you have heard. We come not as Christians asking for a union of church 
and state,, but as American citizens, asking for the perpetuation of one of our most 
important institutions, the American Sabbath, to whose protfected rest and culture of 
conscience and hours for thought we owe, more than to anything else, the fact that 
we are not, like France, a republic '' good forthis day only," lying uneasily in the crater 
of a not extinct volcano. 

' The requirements of religion and the requirements of civil law sometimes coincide. 
For instance, both forbid murder and incest and thieving, and in most cases needless 
Sunday toil; but while religion forbids these things as sins against God, the civil law 
forbids them as crimes against man, 

We come to you because you are a committee on education in behalf of what we 
call the working-man's college. Without the American Sabbath the American voter 
would be incapable of self-government, like the adult infants of continental countries 
who are content to take amusement in i>lace of liberty. The hours afforded to the 
workingman for thought by twenty-one years of quiet Sabbaths are equal to the days 
for study in a college course. In the reforms of illiteracy which this committee con- 
template the influence of quiet Sabbaths (protected on the one hand against the at- 
tacks of greed, and on the other hand against the attacks of lust) upon the difiusion 
of knowledge and the diffusion of conscientiousness can not safely be ignored. 

We come to you more especially as the committee ou labor in Isenalf of a million 
and a quarter of our fellow-countrymen who are held in the Egyptian bondage of 
Sabbathless toil, chiefly through the influence of the Governmoiit — the post-office 
giving an example for the opening of other places of business on the street and the 
mail-train opening the way for running of other Sunday trains. 

Hon. Carroll D. 'Wright, in his report on Sunday labor in Massachusetts a year or 
two since, showed from the stand-point of the very master of labor reform that it has 
no other department more important than the question of Sunday labor. He said 
to me yesterday, "JS'o man likes to work on Sunday." He is now making investiga- 
tions on a large scale in regard to railroad work, and especially in regard to the op- 
pression of the health and consciences of the groat array of workingmen from needless 

' * Dr. Rufus W. Clark, of Albany, in The Intelligencer. 



I 



SUNDAY SEST BILL. 135 

Sunday toil. The mittiiio; dovrn of the hours of the i>ostmon — the measure xvhioh has 
already passed the House of Kepresentatives and I suppose is now before the Senate — 
the ciL;hr,-hour law for the postal service, is not as important, thou»;]i we indorse it, 
as this proposition for a six-day law for postmen. I believe .they should have both, 
but a man can get more rest by having one whole day in every week to be with his 
family than by an equal reduction of labor scattered through the seven-day round of 
toil. 

William Black Steele, in the March number of the North American Review, shows 
that the holiday Sunday has more work than play. Kecent investigations of the Ger- 
man Government, which had become alarmed at the increase of Sunday work, and 
was receiving protests from workiugmen, even from socialists, in regard to this alarm- 
ing increase— these investigations have shown that even in the factories of Germany 
57 per cent, of the emT)loy^s work on Sunday, and 77 per cent, of those engaged in. 
transportation and trade. It is this work-aday Sunday which the continental gov- 
ernm.ents are seeking to be rid of, against which we would have our Government take 
preventive measures, because it is easier to prevent than to repent. This movement 
is in harmony with the awakening American spirit, whose watchword is, ** America 
for American institutions." 

What we ask is that this Committee on Labor (and here I state the whole proposi- 
tion in brief) shall, as far as the national jurisdiction extends, first among the enj- 
ploy(53 of the Government and then in the wider domain of inter-state commerce, pro- 
hibit all needless Sunday work. 

Senator Payne. Does that include the stopping of the transportation of the mails? 

Mr. Crafts. Yes. We do not ask all this in one bill ; that is, we do not expect 
it all in one bill. It would hardly be consistent for the United States Governineut, 
the largest of employers, while its army of postal employes is required to do needless 
Sunday work, to prohibit railroad employers to require Sunday work. What wculd 
naturally and consistently come first is a bill prohibiting Sunday work on the part 
or the Government's employes in the mail and military service. This is imi)ortant 
not only for the sake of the men, but for the sake of a consistent national example. 
National laws recognize the Sabbath. Congress rests commonly upon that day. The 
employes of the Government, except those in the military and postal service, rest on 
that day; but the Government, by working its postal employes in every State of the 
Union on the Sabbath, sets an example of Sabbath-breaking which has its influence 
in the opening of stores and the running of other than mail-trains on the Sabbath. 

Senator Payne. In Avhat respect does the Government interfere with the observ- 
ance of the Sabbath except in the transportation and distribution of the mails ? 

Mr. Crafts. I was about to state that the mail train was the first Sunday train. 
The only Sunday train which the States would tolerate at first v/ere these^! which 
they were compelled to tolerate. On some roads the mail train is to-day the only 
train that prevents the railroad managers, who would stop Sunday trains altogether, 
from giving complete Sabbath rest to the railroad employes. It is because of the 
mail trains that more than 500,000 railroad men have toVork on Sunday, besides 
most of the 105,000 engaged in the mail service itself. 

Senator Payne. That was not the purport of my question. You say that the 
Government has control of the mails, but in what other department of industry or 
labor has the Government any control over the observance of the Sabbath ? 

Mr. Crafts. The Government control extends clearly to the mail and military 
service, and to the dej)ariment of interstate commerce, which is just now before Con- 
gress, in many forms, so that this appeal for further reform of interstate commerce is 
quite timely. 

Senator Payxe. What, for instance, is the military service on Sunday? 

Mr. Crafts. The morning inspection and the afternoon parade. 

Senator Payne. You claim that those exercises should be omitted on Sunday? 

Mr. Crafts. Yes. Marching is the soldier's Avork, and therefore he should be re- 
lieved from it. Even at the sanitariums they omit the baths on Sunday because the 
human system requires a change one day in the week. 

Senator Payne. How would you apply your principle to the Navy? 

Mr. Crafts. Of course vessels at sea we do not expect to stop for the Sabbath at 
mid-ocean. A naval vessel on an ocean voyage would be like other ships at sea; 
but we would not have coasting vessels of the Navy perform unnecessary work on 
Sunday. 

Senator Payne. I do not wish to interrupt you further, except to have you sub- 
stantially point out one thing. I think, in theory, we are all agreed ; but I should 
like to have you state in what respect, and to what extent, you suppose the Govern- 
ment authority can interfere to stop Sunday work. 

Mr. Crafts. I am just coming to that. But, first, I wish to call attention to tho 
gvct that v.-liile Congress passes resolutions in favor of workingmcn it is the very 
Pliaraoh among employers. I do not know of any class of employees, except those in 
the postal service, who are worked from thirteen to sixteen hours a day. They have 



134 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

to leave their babies asleep in the morning and can not retnrn until they are asleep 
at ni<;ht, with night watching and Sundajr work added to this heavy load. We had 
in New York what were called '^ the maii-killer cars," the men beiug required on 
alternate w^eeks to work for seven days, eighteen hours per day, including the inter- 
vals for meals. Those ^oars have been cut down to twelve, leaving the Post-Office 
Department of the United States the dishonor of being the champion " man-killer." 

The Chairman. Will you not mention in what instances which occur to your mind 
the United States Government is a Pharaoh ? 

Mr. Crafts. I will state the case of my own postman of a few months since. He 
had to leave his home at half past 5 in the morning to reach the post-office, which, 
as usual in the city, was half an hour away, at 6 o'clock sharp — a minute's delay 
meaning a day's wages lost. He got home at 9 o'clock, or a little after. Besides this 
he had night watching to do in turn, and Sunday work. Do you wonder the man 
broke down, became intemperate, and was discharged ? 

I wish to call the attention of Senators to the fact that you are soon to have before 
you the eight-hour law for postmen, so that immediate action is possible on some of 
these matters, if they seem to you practical, I refer to the bill recently passed by 
the House of Representatives cutting down the postmen's hours of labor. 

I wish, first, to suggest some improvements in the postal laws, which I am sure 
you will think practical, as the Postmaster-General did v.hen I called upon him yes- 
terday, hoping that they can be at once put into the eight-hour bill as amendments. 

The changes I have to propose in the postal laws are based on correspondence with 
every State and Territory in the Union, Circulars were sent out three years ago and 
again recently. 

I believe I can show the committee, first of all, that the present postal laws leave 
too much to the discretion, or indiscretion, of the local postmaster ; for instance, in the 
matter of the Sunday opening of the post-office. I will read the national law in re- 
gard to the opening of post-offices on Sunday, that you may see how a coach-and- 
four or more could be driven through it. This is section 481 of the " Postal Laws and 
Regulations," which was presented to me yesterday by the Postmaster- General. 

'•When the mail arrives on Sunday he (the postmaster) will keep his office open 
for one hour or more" — 

Twenty-four hours is "more," and some postmasters so interpret it ; our own New 
York postmaster, for instance, and certain others — 

"After the arrival and assortment thereof, if the public convenience require it, for 
the delivery of the same only. If it be received during the time of public worship, 
the opening of the post-office will be delayed until services have closed , He need not 
open his office during the day of Sunday if no mails arrive after the closing of the 
office on Saturday and before 6 o'clock Sunday afternoon. While open, stamps may 
be sold to any one applying for them ; but money-orders must not be issued nor paid 
nor letters registered on that day. Delivery on Sunday must not be restricted to box- 
holders, but made to all who call while the office is open." 

Senator Riddleberger, You have read the United States statute ? 

Mr, Crafts. That is the United States statute as it stands in the volume of '' Pos- 
tal Laws," given me by the Postmaster-General yesterday. 

To show the actual interpretation of this loose law, let me tell you what are my 
reports from various parts of the country. I have letters from the Saint Louis post- 
master, the Chicago postmaster, the New York postmaster, the Philadelphia post- 
master, and also reports from four smaller cities and towns in most of the States, 

Postmaster Pearson, of New York City, in a letter to me, dated April 17, 1884, said : 

''One-half the entire clerical and carrier force of this office is on duty during a 
portion of each Sunday in alternate sections — the superintendents and other officers, 
myself included, being present during a part of every Sunday. At this office and its 
branches about 700 persons are employed during a portion of each Sunday. Practi- 
cally the general deliveiy of this office is never closed." 

In a letter dated March 28, 1888, Postmaster Pearson says of the above : 

" The statements are still true, except that somewhat less than one-half the clerical 
force is employed on Sunday. The total number of clerks and carriers on duty on 
Sunday is perhaps about 800 All kinds of mail are delivered on call on Sundays. 
All second-class matter oifered is received. Stamps are sold during limited hours at 
branch offices, and in limited quantities at any time at the general post-office." 

Assistant Postmaster Henry Drake, of Philadelphia, in a letter to me, dated April 
3, 1888, says: ■ ■ 

'' There are employed in this office 995 persons. Of this number but 52 do not work 
on Sundays. Four hundred and thirty-eight work on certain Sundays, averaging, 
perhaps, one Sunday in three ; the average time of work being six hours. Every 
class of mail matter, except money-order, registered or special-delivery letters, is 
handled on Sunday, One of the general delivery windows is open the entire day, 
there being three windows usually open from 9 a. m. to 10 p. m. " 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 135 

Postmaster Judd, of Chicago, in a letter to me, dated March 31, 1888, says : 

*'Only about 15 per cent of the clerks connected with this office are off duty on 
Sundays ; that about 50 per cent, of the letter-carriers are off duty on that day, and 
the general-delivery clerks are on duty on said day from 10.30 a. m. to 1 p. m. All 
classes of mail matter, with the exception of registered mail, are delivered to those 
who may call between the hours of 11.30 a. m. and 12.30 j). m. Persons who have 
lock-boxes and drawers in this office can get their mail at any time on Sundays be- 
tween the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p. m., and the clerks in connection therewith are on 
duty Sundays from about 10 a. m. to 1 p. m." 

[From another source we learn that Postmaster Judd has stopped the Sunday sale 
of stamj)s.] 

Postmaster Riley, of Cincinnati, in a letter to me, dated April 4, 1888, states, in 
answer to questions, that of 301 employ<Ss onl^^ 14 never work on Sundays; that the 
box delivery and general delivery are open from 9.30 to 11 a. m. ; that stamps are 
sold from 9.30 to 11 a. m., and trom 6.30 to 7 p. m.; that "special-delivery letters 
are delivered ; " that 25 mails are received on Sunday as against 64 on week days; 
that mail is not delivered at the branch offices, but only at the general office. 

Postmaster Hyde, of Saint Louis^ througli Assistant Postmaster McHenry, in letter 
of March 30, 18S8, informs me that of the 425 employ6a in that office^ only the 12 in the 
money-order division never work on Sundays; that 190 carriers and 60 distributers 
average five hours of Sunday work ; that general delivery and box delivery are open 
from il.30 a. m. to 1 p. m. 

The same contrasts that appear in these offices of the highest grade, my reports 
show in every other grade. One office opens once, for an hour only ; another of the 
same grade opens twice, for two hours each time. One opens only before the hour of 
church ; another, only during the hour of church. One sells stamps; another of the 
same grade does not. " One delivers special-carrier letters; another of the same g]ft,de 
does not. Oue works the employes an average of two hours ; another, of six. 

Senator Payne. Our time is very limited, and I suggest that you condense as much 
as you can, and give us the facts. 

Mr. Crafts. I wish to make a few points «nre, one by one, rather than to speak of 
many. Those that come further on are the ones you might think, perhaps, the most 
ideal. Those that come first are the ones that, ordinarily, men would think the most 
practical for immediate consideration. 

Senator Payxe. It is the practical points we want to have presented. 

Mr. Crafts. The first point, the one which the Postmaster-General says is practi- 
cal, and ought to be made a law, is that it should not be possible for any postmaster 
in this country to run the United States post-office as a rival and competitor and an- 
tagonist of the churches. The law allows the j)ost-office to be kept open through the 
church hours, unless the first mail of the day comes during those hours. If it comes 
five minutes or more before the church service begins, the post-office can be run, and 
is run in many cases, all through church hours as the rival and antagonist and the 
competitor of the churches. We do not believe in " church and state, " nor do we 
believe in state against church. 

A law forbidding the opening the United States post-office during the usual honrs of 
public worship would remedy this difficulty, and would bo better than nothing; but 
we desire more than this. 

The law should also take from the local postmaster the power to keep his employes 
at work at such hours as would prevent them from going to church. 

A new branch superintendent has been sent to one of the branch offices in New 
York City within a few weeks. The previous superintendent had left the employes 
free during the forenoon, so that those who wished were able to attend church, "the 
afternoon being sufficient for the work to be done. The new superintendent, partly 
to be enterprising, partly because ho thought the postmen would like to go on ex- 
cursions on Sunday afternoons, though they had not said so, discriminates against 
the churches in favor of the Sunday picnics by transferring the Sunday work from 
the afternoon to the morning church-hour — an instance of what is possible anywhere 
under our present loose law. 

The discretion of the local postmaster is also too great in regard to the amount of 
Sunday work he can require of his emplov^s. In some offices the amount is doable 
and treble what it is in other offices of the same grade. If the selling of stamps on 
Sunday can be dispensed with in Chicago, it can be dispensed with everywhere. If 
special-delivery messengers can be allowed their Sunday rest in Philadelphia, why 
not in Cinciun:iti ? 

The sale of stamps on Sunday and the sending out of carriers with special-delivery 
letters and parcels (section 688) ought not to bo left to the discretion or caprice of 
the local postmaster, but uniformly forbidden as needless Sunday work. 

The individual postmaster now decides whether the special-delivery messenger, 
who works from 7 a. m. to 11 p. m. on week days, shall spend the same long hours on 
Sunday carrying parcels at 12 or 15 cents apiece, as an express for law-breaking mer- 



138 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

chants who keep at business on Sunday. When this practice Las become oonimou in 
one place it will soon become commoii in all, and when special delivery l)y carriers 
becomes common, general delivery by carriers on Sunday will follow almost as 'i mat- 
ter of course. Workingmen and humanitarians in Europe are trying to stop carrier 
deliveries just when wo are beginning to have them. Let us not do what we shall 
want to undo. .It is easier to prevent than to repent. 

Senator Payne. All those minor matters would follow the general x)roposition. I 
wish to know whether your reform contemplates the entire suspension of the trans- 
portation, distribution, and delivery of the mails on Sunday? 

Mr. Crafts. We will take a quarter of a loaf, half a loaf, or a whole loaf. If the 
Government should do nothing more than forbid the opening of the ]K)st.-of(i:jHS at 
church hours it would be a national tribute to the value of religion and would lead 
to something more satisfactory. 

Another point in which the local x^ostmasters, in large cities at least, r.ced reslraint 
The postmaster of a large city can send out Sunday mails ou newspaper trains to 
scores of surrounding towns where the post-office employes have had Sunday rest, 
thus making more Sunday work, not only in his own office but in many others. Post- 
master Pearson has done this on his own responsibility, as he admits in a letter to nje 
dated April 17, 1884. Doubtless other city postmasters have done the same. The law 
ought to be changed to make such increasing of Sunday work by local i)o&tmasters 
impossible. 

Senator Riddlebergee. Do you not know that the railroad companies hired thenj - 
selves to deliver the mails, not the postmaster ? 

Mr. Crafts. The postmaster did it, as the letter states, in conjunction with the 
Sunday newspapers and to share the expense in running their extra trains. 

Senator Riddleberger, I wish to call your attention to the fact that the New York 
papers are brought into Washington ou Sunday perhaps two hours earlier than on a 
week day, but, as I understand it, because the railroad companies make contracts to 
that effect, and not the Post-Office Department of the x^ostmaster in New York. 

Mr. Crafts. My statement is in regard to special Sunday trains for Sunday news- 
papers. I have the facts directly from the postmaster. I wish to make one more 
point in regard to lessening Sunday work in local post-offices. I find no one v/ho 
defends the handling of business circulars and packages on the Sabbath so as to de- 
prive men of their culture of conscience and their hours at home. 

Some of the evils I have mentioned might be removed by such a law as is proposed 
in a ''Report from the Select Committee on Sunday Postal Labor," presented to the 
House of Commons, August 10, 1887, of which I will have copies sent to the committee 
as far as possible. The committee was appointed because of the numerous petitions 
to Parliament against the growing evil of Sunday work in the postal service in Eng- 
land. The British have gone a little further than we have in Sunday postal work, 
and they are trying to get back. The report gives the remedies which the committee 
recommend : 

(1) That the collection, dispatch, and the delivery on Sunda^y of books, circulars, 
and printed matter other than newspapers be discontinued. 

(2) No man shall be on duty more than alternate Sundays. As in our country, 
some postmasters kept their men eraployed seven Sundays in eight and six Sundays 
in eight and three Sundays in eight, and there was no uniformity. The report also 
recommends that all the postal employes be relieved from work on alternate Sundays. 
There, as here, the work had been different in every|office from every otiier, some em- 
ployes working every Sunday, some seven Sundays out of eight, and some only one in 
two. The British Government stepsin and says, ' ' We are not going to hUve these distin c- 
tions made, not only between postal servants and other servants of Government, but 
between one post-office and another, and we say that the men must rest ou alternate 
Sundays." 

Another recommendation is, that the question whether the post-office of u town or 
city shall be open at all on Sunday shall be decided by local option. 

Senator Payne. What has been done in Parliament in regard to this report ? 

Mr. Crafts. This was only on August 10 last. I do not think that this proposed law , 
with all the Irish business on hand, has yet been passed, but it is recommended by a 
very strong committee. Such a law as this report proposes would be better than 
nothing; but we want more than this. 

A law covering the points I have already mentioned, it seems to me, would com- 
mend itself to every humane and just man ; protecting the church services from post- 
office competition ; protecting the employes from being kept at work such bours as 
would keep them from church-going; reducing the Sunday work by stopping the 
handling of circulars and packages; insisting that all employes shall rest on alternate 
Sundays; and leaving it to every town to decide the question of opening the office 
on Sunday, w^hioh would cause a wholesome agitation everywhere of the question of 
Sunday mails, and so lead, we believe, to the entire cessation of Sunday postal work 
through a national law. . 



SUNDAY KEST BILL. 137 

Senator Payne. Would you restrict such an election to legal ^■oters, or would yon 
alloAY the women to vote ? 

Mr. C1JAFT8. I am in favor of woman suffrage, but this would bo decided by the 
voters, wlioever tliey were, at the time of voting. Perhaps women will have the 
ballot by the time this comes up for decision, their reform is moving on so fast. 

Senator Payne. You are in favor of woman sutlrage, but would contrive suiiio 
technicality to keep them out ? 

Mr. Ckafts. Oh, no. We ask that the question bo decided by the voters, whoever 
they are. 

Now I come to tlie second division of my discussion of postal reforms, kindred to 
the first, but perhaps more radical. I believe the law sJiould restrict the aniocratio 
power of the Fosimastcr-General, I like Postmaster-General Dickinson, the present, 
king of the mails^ so far as I have seen his record on this matter, but I do not believe 
that the Post-Oftice Department of a republic should be an antocracy. It is at pres- 
ent a monarchy, and not a limited monarchy. All over the country there is a great 
host of people who are under the dictation of the Postmaster-General in almost 
everything. 

Senator Payne. To whom would you commit the authority to be shared with 
him ? 

Mr. Crafts. I would have the Government define more strictly the authority of 
the Postmaster-General, and make laws which shall limit his power in the matter, 
for instance, of sending out carriers on Sunday. 

In 16'-28 and 1829 there were 4{)7 petitions from 21 States asking for the cessation of 
all Sunday work in connection with the mails. (" Sabbath for Man," p. 272.) The 
predominating sentiment of the nation seemed to be in favor of this humane request. 
Christians desired the nation's example to be put on the side of Sabbath-keeping, a}Hl 
workingmen desired the nation's example to be arrayed against needless Sunday 
w^ork. 

What is the answer which that army of x^etitioners got from the Postmaster-General, 
whose powers were then just about the same as now ? 

He replied in the spirit of a Russian antocrat and in the rhetoric of a Western 
editor : 

" So long as the silver river flows and the green grass grows and the oceanic tides 
rise and fall on the first day of the week, so long shall the mails of the Republic be 
circulated on that day." 
Senator Payne. Who was he? 
Mr. Crafts. I haven't his name. 

Senator Payne. His reply was somewhat poetic at least. 

Mr. Crafts. He was probably a Western man. The whole history of the matter is 
in this book ("The Sabbath for Man," p. 271), which I shall present to each of the 
committee. The arguments there used are most of them appropriate to-day. 
Senator Payne. That v.^as about sixty years ago? 

Mr. Crafts. The powers of the Postmaster-General have not been essentially 
changed. But I will get to Vilas in a moment. 

Postmaster-General Jewell has the honor, or dishonor, of ordering a Sunday deliv- 
ery by carriers. He was an excellent Christian man, w^ho thought he was only yield- 
ing to the pressure of public sentiment in this matter. One delivery was made in the 
city of New York. Postmen took letters for ministers to them in the pulpit, in the 
midst of their sermons, to show the barbarity of their new Sunday tasks. 

Thereswept down upon Washington such a storm of protests from the Christian busi- 
ness men of that city against this increase of Sunday postal work that before the 
second Sunday the order was repealed. But, if we had had for Postmaster-General 
a man like Assistant Indian Commissioner Atkins, more pagan than his wards, a man 
with no regard for the rights of Christian citizens, the order might not have been re- 
pealed. Not long since Postmaster-General Vilas issued an order that letters and 
packages bearing special-delivery stamp should be delivered on Sundays as on other 
days. When a Sabl)ath association secretary, who is here to-day, came to General 
Vilas expressing the protest of tlio Christians of Philadelphia against that order, ho 
was answered, "What I have done, I have done ;" and it was only by the aid of the 
President that the order w;is changed from a positive requirement that all x>ostmas- 
tors in. special-delivery ofdcea should send out the special-delivery messengers on 
Sunday to an absurd pennission to each postmaster to do in the matter as he pleased, 
80 that the ciuestion whether messengers on duty from 7 n. m. to 11 ]). ni. six days in 
tho week shall be on duty for the same barbarous and absurd hours on Sunday also, 
in this age of tho telegraph, is left to the caprice of each local postmaster. 

Senator Payne. You would discriminate between telegraph operators and mail- 
cnrricrs? 

Mr. Cic.\fts. It is not a fjucstion of discrimination ; the question is simply whether 
any Postoiaster-General who chooses to do so shall have the ]>o\ver to order Sunday- 
currier deliveries everywhere. What we want in this particular respect is a law that 



138 SUNDAY ii^EST BILL. 

sliall prohibit any delivery of mail ou Sunday by carriers. Ifc is bad enougb to have 
the work done in the office, oven with the limitations of which I have spoken, bnt we 
ask at least (and this is better than nothing) that the law shall protect us against the 
possibility of any Sunday delivery by any kind of carriers . We want more than this, 
and I shall now make a full statement of our demand iu regard to Sunday mails, which 
wo expect to keep asking for until we get it. 

We ask that a law shall be passed instructing the Postmaster- General to mahe vo further 
ontraots which shall include the carriage of the mails on the Sadhath^ and to provide that 
hereafter no mail matter shall he collected or distributed on that day. You ask, "What 
if a'letter calling a son to the bedside of his dying mother should be delayed twenty- 
four hours by stopping mails?" Did you never hear of the telegraph — soon to be the 
nation's ''fast mail?" Such emergency letters, that are now delivered on Sunday, 
may go by telegraph on Saturday. 

Senator Payne. Then you do not propose to interfere with the telegraph ? 

Mr. Crafts. I would have it as at Toronto— all telegraph operators resting on Sun- 
day, except a few men at the central office for emergencies — each man's turn tor Sun- 
day work coming only once in six weeks or more. As to business letters, some of the 
most prosperous cities in the world have no Sunday work in their post-offices. I have 
a letter in my hand recently received from the postmaster at Toronto, a city as widely 
extended as most of our large cities, though not as thickly populated; a city of 
140,000, which has grown as fast as almost any city of our country, and which is 
second to none in its moral record. There, with all the conditions of a large city, 
this is the statement, dated Toronto, March 29, 1888, and signed John Carruthers, 
assistant postmaster: 

"No clerk is required to do any work in this office on Sunday. Our office closes to 
the public at 7 p. m.on Saturday, and is not open again until 7 a. m. ou Monday. 
Consequently no mail matter is delivered on Sunday, neither by carrier nor through 
the boxes. Our sorters all stop work before 12 on Saturday night and do not resume 
duty until 12 p. m. on Sunday." 

Nothing goes to pieces. The rule gives all an equal chance. No business man ean. 
get ahead of his competitor by getting his Sunday mail, and practicing for the insane 
asylum by Sunday work. All rest, with no loss to any one. 

Senator Riddlkberger. Is there not a trouble arising from the fact that there are 
different State laws regulating banking and other business transactions, such as do 
not exist in Canada? 

Mr. Crafts. All those things can be adjusted. You can give them time enough for 
any changes of that kind. Perhaps Toronto seems too provincial for men who come 
from larger cities. So let me give you the facts about London : 

" Within a radius of 5 miles from the general post-office in London no inland let- 
ters are carried, sorted, delivered, or dispatched on the Lord's Day ('Sabbath for 
Man,' p. 286)." 

London rests its postal employes, and yet business suffers no congestion. 

Senator Payne, Have you seen the statement lately made by autliority that Lon- 
don on Sunday is the most immoral and dissipated city in the world ? 

Mr. Crafts. That is due to the liquor drinking; not to the fact that the mails are 
closed. 

Senator Payne. In other words, closing the mails on Sunday does not reform the 
city ? 

Mr. CraftSo Not entirely, but it reforms the men in the ]3ostal service. It saves 
them from the oppression of conscience which makes men ready to go into all sorts of 
crime. 

Senator Payne. Do the post-office employes there go to church when they do not 
have to attend the post-office ? 

Mr. Crafts. A i3ostmaster recently said to me, " When men have to work a part of 
Sunday they do not usually go to church the rest of the day." I know one cause of 
this. They are ill at ease iu conscience about Sunday work. I never met an engi- 
neer or a postal clerk who was not troubled about his Sunday work. His conscience 
is offended ; he feels that he is regularly breaking one law of God, and sometimes 
thinks he might as well break ten commandments as one. Going to church only fills 
him with self-reproach in regard to the crime which the Government requires of him, 
and not being courageous enough to give up his place rather than his sin, he stays 
away from what would remind him of it; and so those who handle the nation's 
wealth are almost wholly destitute of the culture of conscience which none need more 
than they. There is no reason for running a Sunday mail, as you see, not even for 
business letters. Certainly the Government should not keep its postal employes at 
work on Sunday for the benefit of the Sunday newspapers. Weekly newspapers do 
not ask it. 

As to Sunday parades, wo ask that the Sunday morning inspection and the Sunday 
afternoon parades shall be stopped because they are infringements of the soldier's 
right to Sunday rest and also of his rights of conscience. Though the number of our 



SUNDAY HteST BILL, 139 

soldiers is small and the secular duties required of thera ou Suuday are not Tory 
wearisome, we think the nation's exauiple iu this matter is important. 

Now, a few words about interstate Sunday trains. 

In the first place, the National Gov^ernmont is the only power that can accomplish 
this largest of labor reforms. In Conuecticut they have recently enuuici pitted ten 
thousand railway emploj'^s from Sunday toil by a Uiw proliibiting excursions and 
freight trains on Sunday. No trains of any kind are allowed except morning and 
evening, and even then the railroad commissioners may allow only such trains as 
they think are required by considerations of mercy and necessity. They allow milk 
trains and Sunday newspaper trains, evidently thinking that babes can not live one 
day withon" fresh milk nor men without fresh supplies of scandal. 

Mail trains are certainly not works of necessity or mercy, but the State has no 
power to stop the nation's Sabbath-breaking in its borders. 

But in these State reforms "the interstate difficulty met them at every point." And 
so in every State where railroad managers or the State authorities would reduce Sun- 
day work on the railroads they are impeded by the fact that the National Goverumout 
must co-operate iu order to make the reform complete. 

I do not speak as a minister ou the subject of railroads, but I bring to your notice 
the statements of railroad men. The whole letters are here in the book which you 
will have. 

In 1883 the president of the Michigan Central Railway, Mr. Ledyard, wrote: 

"If all railroad companies competing for the samoclass of traffic from and to com- 
mon points were in accord, it would bo practicable, to a very large extent, to abandou 
the running of railway trains on the Sabbath day." ("Sabbath for Man,''" p. 301.) 

The Railway Age says editorially, iu the same issue with this letter (May 24, 
1883): 

" Mr. Ledyard's conviction that he and other railway managers are all committing 
a fearful mistake in allowing the continuance and rapid growth of this Sunday labor 
is held, we believe, by the great majority of railway officers, and it is to be hoped 
that in their perusal and public consideration of the great problems of rail way manage- 
ment they will give that serious attention to this subject which its importance de- 
mands." 

The " accord " by which " the running of railway trains on the Sabbath " might 
be abandoned can not be secured permanently by any pool or agreement of managers, 
but only through a national latf, such as we have abundant assurance would be wel- 
comed by many railroad managers who lack the moral courage to stop Sunday trains 
while rival lines continue them. 

R. S. Hayes, a railroad president, says: 

"Until the proper action is taken by the public in the form of amended laws and 
revised rulings, relieving the roads from liabilities resulting from the susj)ension of 
transportation, a certain amount of Sunday labor must of necessity be performed. 
(" Sabbath for Man," p. 305)." 

Compulsory Sunday rest for all would gratify railroad managers as well as railroad 
men, with no loss to either. 

General A. S. Diven, a prominent railroad man, recently said iu the Christian 
Union of January 5, 1883: 

(1) The traffic will be substantially the same per week whether moved in one hun- 
dred and sixty-eight or one hundred and forty-four hours. [That is in seven days 
or six.] 

(2) It can be moved in one hundred and forty-four hours. 

(3) The extra cost will be fully compensated for by the improved service. 

(4) There is no public necessity requiring Sunday service. 
In a recent letter to me. General Diven says: 

" There is no valid excuse for railroad traffic on Sunday, cither for raails, passengers, 
or freight. Why should not traffic on our railroads rest with ail the other business ac- 
tivities ? None of the other great interests are paralyzed by resting one day in seven, 
nor would any follow the suspension of railroad traffic. Is the transmission of mails 
a necessity? The best and most successful business men I have ever l<nown never 
open their letters on Sunday. If there ever was a necessity for the Sunday mail serv- 
ice, it ceased with the telegram. If ever there was a necessity for moving perishable 
articles on Sunday, it has been removed by the refrigerator-car. My article in the 
Christian Union was intended as a challenge to railroad managers to justify their 
management. When that challenge is accepted I believe it can be successfully met 
by men of practical experience," 

General Diven shows in detail that even through trains from California need not 
run on Sunday; that one train every week can go throngh witiiont interfering 
with the dayliglit of Sunday, starting Sunday night and reaching its eastern ter- 
minus on Sunday morning ; that other trains may stop one day without serious in- 
convenience. I suggest that this would bo no expense to the poor if they were al- 
lowed to lunch and sleep iu the cars, as they do when the cars are in motion. Those 



140 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 

in the palace cars cau usually afford the estra expense of one more night in sleeping 
berth or hotel. Such a stop is physically needed in a seven days' ride, and necessary 
in no other, even if it should cause some inconveience. Thus, to stop Sunday trains, 
why may not railroad passengers be detained one day for the same reason that steam- 
boat passengers are often quarantined for a fortnight — for the public health. The 
Senate has now before it an interstate-commerce bill to protect the health of cattle. 
Why not add another to protect the health of more than half a million railroad men " 
Intersi3ate-commerce reforms thus far have been chiefly for the benefit of manufact- 
urers and merchants, protecting them against monopolists, who would use the rail- 
roads as battering-rams to destroy their competitors. We ask now for interstate- 
commerce reforms to protect railroad men themselves against the railroads being used 
as battering-rams to destroy their health and morals by Sunday work. 

Senator Ingalls has introduced a bill, as you know, to extend interstate-commerce 
reform so as to protect the homes of a prohibitory State against the liquor dealers of 
a license State. Wo ask you to go a step further, and protect the employes of the 
railroads by a labor reform of the first magnitude, relieving more than half a million 
railroad men from this needless, unhealthy, demoralizing Sunday toil. 

The only purpose in running trains on Sunday is to make money, to fatten the bank 
account of millionaires, already too much favored by our laws. If any work for gain 
(not also work of necessity or charity) is allowed, in the name of equity all work for 
gain should be allowed. The law that forbids a poor widow to sell wholesome books 
on the Sabbath and allows the millionaire to sell railroad tickets is itself a crime — a 
crime against equity. Anarchy fattens on such injustice. 

The plea that these Sunday trains are necessary to carry sorrowing fathers to their 
dying sons is often urged, but the answer is that it is vastly better for a boy now and 
then to die without the sentimental comfort of his father's presence, which can not 
save his life, than that thousands of men should die before their time by seven-day 
toil and the vices to which Sunday work so often leads. 

As to the excuse, " The public demand the Sunday trains," I answer, " The pocket 
demands them." 

Five hundred men with money in their hands, asking for a Sunday excursion, make 
a "demand" to which a railroad manager is more responsive than the petition of 
50,000 citizens against the excursion in the interest of public morality and of the em- 
ployes, whose cars are cars of juggernaut, crushing health and conscience beneatb 
their wheels. 

Every railroad manager and every legislator who is not deaf to the signs of the 
times must hear in the recent railroad riots a " demand" loud as the roar of Waterloo, 
not for more Sunday trains, but for none. 

How quickly these train men become train wreckers! Recently the rioters only 
needed a word from the railroad king, Arthur, ordering a general strike of engineers,^ 
to enable them to plunge this whole nation into a social and commercial anarchy, of 
which 1877, and the bomb-throwing in Chicago, and the New York blizz.'^rd were but 
gentle hints. 

These men themselves say that their train wrecking and their Sabbath wrecking- 
are closely connected. They feel that having broken one commandment they might 
as well go through the list. 

*' When you force a conductor to break the fourth commandraent, you must not uo 
surprised if he goes on to break the eighth also," said William E. Dodge to his direc- 
tors when urging the discontinuance of Sunday trains. 

Perhaps you wonder that railroad men do not themselves appeal for Sunday rest. 
'.""hey have done so, and ceased only through despair of results. 

Four hundred and fifty engineers of the New York Central Eailway a few years 
ago sent to their master a most eloquent and pitiful appeal for Sunday rest, which 
will be quoted by one of the other speakers at this hearing. 

That plea which greed would not hear, let Congress receive as the appeal of all 
railroad men. Hon, Carroll D. Wright says that the only railroad men who want 
to have work done on Sunday are those who do not the work, but only pocket the 
dividends. 

The railroad managers, as I have shown, would many of them welcome a law g"» v- 
ing their roads a day of rest. Competition is the only thing which makes it seem 
necessary to keep their trains going on Sunday. In Canada Sunday trains are allowed 
to run only on account of American competition, and the strict Sabbath-keepers of the 
Dominion would quickly stop them when that excuse was removed. The Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad has reduced its Sunday trains within a few years, and so have some 
other roads. 

What we want is that this matter shall be taken out of the realm of individual ca- 
price, and that all railroad men shall be equitably protected in their right to Sunday 
rest, first by the National Government in its realm of interstate commerce, thus re- 
moving the chief obstacle to carrying forward the reform in the realm of State laws. 
A new king, in attempting to beautify his capital, came to a massive antique build- 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 141 

ing ^hich did not quite suit liis fancy, and so began to tear it down. When a stone 
or'two had fallen he saw uucovered before him the inscription : " Thesb gates witli 
their country stand or fall." Astounded, he withdrew his destroying hand. Let not 
the nation itself, by its Sabbath-breaking example in the mail and miiit;iiy service, and 
by allowing Sunday work in its wider realm of interstate commerce, help to tear down 
the very citadel of morality and liberty, the American Sabbath, built of Siuaitic gran- 
ite and Plymouth rock, for ''These gates with their country stand or fall." 
The CnAiRM.iN. Other speakers will now be heard by the committee. 

STATEMENT OP REV. T. A. FERNLEV-, D. D. 

Mr. Crafts. There will be short addresses by other men who are present repre- 
senting Sabbath associations. I will first introduce Eev. T. A. Feruley, D. D., avIio 
represents the Philadelphia Sabbath Association, one of the most vigorous associa- 
tions of the kind and a citizens' association. 

Mr. Ferxley. Mr. Chairman and Senators, I think since you have heard Dr. Cvu ua' 
most exhaustive speech there is nothing for me to say; and I have no doubt that 
you will be rejoiced to hear me state that I do not intend to say much. 

I came here from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, the Centennial City — the 
grandest city on this continent, New York not excepted. We claim we have the best 
regulated city; we claim to have the most orderly city; we claim to have the city 
where the Sabbath is kept perhaps better than in any other city on the coatinenr, 
perhaps in the world. Philadelphians never boast, however; but that is about the 
way we feel. 

I could have gotten a petition from almost every leading bank president, bank di- 
rector, and merchant in the city of Philadelphia, and io would have been as long as 
from one end of this room to another, but I did not deem it necessary; it seemed to 
me so self-evident that the Senate would look at this matter just as their fellow-citi- 
zens are looking at it, and would act in their best judgment under the rule which 
says, " Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you." As none of you, 
Senators, would be willing to give away your seventh-day rest, to tear yourselves 
from your families — from your wives and your children — for the paltry dollar, why 
may others do what you would not do yourselves? Wo in this country Ifi.ve a class 
composed of hundreds of thousands of men, who are our brothers, of the same bl'jod 
as we are, who are deprived of this God-given institution. 

I am here to-day especially as the representative of the Philadelphia Sabbath As- 
sociation, which represents all the churches of Philadelphia. I was going to say all 
the churches, Protestant and Catholic, for I am glad to say that the Catholic Ghiircli 
is with us. Archbishop Ryan some time ago told me that he is cordially with us in 
the effort to secure a proper and rigorous enforcement of Sabbath laws. 

We are not an association of clergymen. Clergymen, you know, gentlemen, are 
clergymen; they talk like preachers generally, andyou can not expect much from them, 
except preacher talk; but business men are in this association, and they have most 
cordially indorsed the petitions which are before you. 

Our association is forty-eight years old, and it is the oldest Sabbath association, 
perhaps, in the world. The indorsement on the petition I have hereisby thepresidcntj 
Alexander Whilldiu, known to some of you; George H. Stuart, the Vice-president, 
and others. The petition has also been indorsed by the ministers of the Methodisu 
Episcopal Church of Philadelphia. But this is not a denominational movement. 
The Methodists only take part with their brethren and friends. That church repre- 
sents 100 pastors in Philadelphia, and about 60,000 members. The petition is also 
indorsed by Hon. Felix R. Brundt, the president of the National Reform Association. 
I will leave the petition with you, if you please. 

The Chairmax. The petition will be formally presented to the Senate. 

Mr. Ferxley. I have nothing to add to what has been said, except that we mean 
business. We come here not in the name of God so much as in the name of humanity. 
We present our appeal upon that foundation. It is the God-given right of man, tlie 
natural inheritance of man, to have one day in seven as a day of rest. 

If we could read the history, not written, of the innumerable accidents, the casualties 
on our railroads, the catastrophes that send human beings, wholesale almost, into 
eternity, it would be seen that in the great mass of cases it is because of the over- 
worked engineer and the overworked switchmen, bound to be at their posts seven 
days in the week, uutil the brain is dazed and the wdiole system is collapsed. Yet 
human life is in trusted to them when they are in a condition so unlit. It is not neces- 
sary to speak to S'Mintors of the United States in regard to the matter, for you know 
that it is the law of nature as well as the law of God that labor shall have its appro- 
priate rent, and tlie sctvent h-day rest is demonstrated to be the proper proportion. 

I leave this inatter with you, gentlemen. la the name of those I represent 1 do 
most earnestly thank you for the kind hearing you have granted us. 



142 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

It ^vas my privilege some months ago to approach the President of the United 
States upon the question of the delivery of special letters on the first day of the week. 
The President made this remark : ^' I appreciate the necessity of absolute, periodical 
rest.'' We all appreciate it, and I believe that you gentlemen, in your Senatorial 
capacity, will act according to your best judgment. If you can not do all we ask, in 
the name o± God and humanity do as much as you can. If you can not give us the 
maximum, give us the minimum. If you can not absolutely abolish the deliverv and 
the carrying of the mail and the running of trains from one State to another on Sun- 
day, give us the greatest possible minimum, so that men may rest according to the 
laws of God and the constitution of their nature. 



STATEMENT OP REV. G. P. NICE. 

Mr. Crafts. Rev. G. P. Nice, of Baltimore, representing the Maryland Sabbath As- 
sociation, will now speak a few words. 

Mr. Nice. I will say. Senators, as did my predecessor in his remarks, that our first 
speaker covered the ground so fully, so graphically, so emphatically, that there really 
appears to be little occasion to detain you longer with this hearing, 

I thoroughly indorse what Mr. Crafts has stated regarding the dissatisfaction of 
the laboring people, oppressed as they are by being practically robbed of their right- 
ful weekly rest-day. They, of course, can not come here and enter their complaints 
in person. Even when spoken to at their duties they seem to fear a danger in ex- 
pressing their feelings in the matter of Sunday worx. It may appear to some that 
the great mass of them are quite indiiferent as to whether they Avork on Sunday the 
same as on any other day. 

I have been told that the great aim is to get good pay for their work, and if they 
get double pay for Sunday work they are as willing to work on that day as on any 
other, etc. But I had occasion to meet with a gentleman some years ago, most largely 
interested in railroad operations, who said to me, ''I have been so many years"— it 
was over a score — ''in the control of men, and during that time I have had, I suppose, 
thousands of men to work under my direction, and of all that number I have only 
known tv^ who seemed to have no concern about the day of the week on which they 
worked." He said they were unwilling to work on the Sabbath unless they felt they 
were compelled to do so, and it made them unhappy with their business when they 
had to work on that day. 

Sometimes men who have been trained in immoral habits, we will say, indicate no 
compunction of conscience in other matters ; they will profane the name of God flip- 
pantly, not thinking what they do ; but while they will do that, it is remarkable that 
as a rule their conscience does shrink from the idea of deliberately settino- about a 
secular task on the Sabbath day. If they think at all about it they shrink from it. 
That fact is worthy of note. 

The Sabbath law is written in nature. The moral law of the Sabbath seems to be 
very clear wherever there has been sufficient light to instruct men regarding its value 
and its demands. We are all aware that the great interest which claims the atten- 
tion of the State is the interest of the masses. We are concerned for the masses, and 
we are aware that the masses have to struggle for their living day by day. We have 
no question but that the Great Father at the first, with His uide vision, beheld the 
masses in these days as well as in others, and that that great heart throbbed with re- 
gard for the masses who would be down in the battle of life six days in the week, at 
least, when he said : 

" Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. * * * In it thou shalt not do any 
work." 

And God said he would give the laboring man a holiday rest on that day. If God 
said he shall rest, who has a right to rob him of that rest ? 

I am verging on the religious aspect of the question, but the religious aspect of the 
question, you observe, gentlemen, goes in close companionship with the secular aspect 
of the question, with the question of safety of person, safety of property, safety of 
life, and of everything that is good. Yet railroad employes may be kept at work 
seven days in the week, as the engineers sometimes are ; and 1 am told as a train 
stops at stations as they rush along on Sunday or any other day, the fireman or engi- 
neer asks some one, "What day is this V They had forgotten the day ; they are mixed 
up ; they are bewildered as to the days of the week. 

But I ask you, gentlemen, is it the part of those who control such operations to 
allow these men to be kept in circumstances and in services which are contrary to the 
very constitution of their brains. Men must rest to become cool, to become liberal. 
You recollect that when Burke wrote to the member of the National Assembly in 
Paris which did so much mischief, he said, "You, by continuing your sessions all 
night, burn out your candles and deliberate in the dark. " The mind, the brain, must 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 143 

be presoryed in order to nnderstaud clearly -what is the duty of the honr aud of the 
moment 

Are not these railroadmen continually the custodians of life and property ? We 
Have heard of the number of these T^•orl^:ers beiug 400,000. Ah ! how many more than 
that there are, if the case were well understood. These men have in their charge 
those things which are more precious than gold. Upon their iidelity aud watchful- 
ness depend the life and the limb of the passengers. Tliey need to be ready for any 
exigency. They need to know how to apply the best remedy for disaster as well as 
to avoid disaster. Can we Avondcr tliat there is so large a proportion of railroad prop- 
erty destroyed, and that so many lives and limbs are lost when life and property are 
under the control of those who'have not the legitimate aud proper opportunity of 
resting tlie mind and correcting the understcaudiug ? 

This question goes practically to the very interest of the masses, the safety of the 
masses, the health, the life of the masses ; and you will observe that it comes right 
in connection with the release of men from that kind of oppression which treats them 
as if they were not possessed of conscience, as if they were a lower order of animals, 
as if they were to come just at the bidding of their masters, and be allowed only such 
rest day as should seem most consistent with those who are managing these great 
concerns. 

Therefore I, as a humble citizen, if with no other object, feel that it is becoming in 
me to stand up for the reduction, particularly of railway work, to which I am di- 
rectiug my thoughts aud aimiug to direct your attentiou. I feel that one of the first 
and most "important thiugs is to allow railway employ 6s the rest-day, to be with their 
families, to be at their churches if they please, to be in quiet, aud to be employing 
their time in that way which would endear them to their families, endear them to 
society, endear them to their business, and make them feel not as a sort of criminal 
in following the railroad lousiness because they have to work on Sunday. They feel 
that it is wrong, and they should be made to feel that they are men of proper moral 
sentiment ; that they are regarded by their fellow-citizens as reliable men, as honest 
men, as good men, and thus cheered, with life brightened in their hoj)es and pros- 
pects and feelings, they will become more effective in the service of the public as well 
as of the companies themselves. 

I have had an o^^portunity to si3eak with very many railroad employes quite re- 
cently, and their united testimony is, " Oh, yes; if I had my Sunday liberty I would 
not care." As the locomotive employes of a great railroad king some years ago said, 
*'\Ve are willing to work every day and at night, but only allow us our rest day," 
and they went on to give reasons for asking that. 

It should be realized that this movement is not merely the application of certain 
persons who would be conspicuous in what they regard as a humanitarian effort or 
otherv.'ise ; that it is not merely as advocates of the laboring people, as that is appar- 
ently now rather a popular theme, that this legislation is sought, but that it arises 
from the fact that these men cry to us as they do for such regard, as they can not 
come in their own person and stead. They can hardly whisper so that it would be 
heard. Some of them have spoken to me with great modesty about this movement, 
and in an undertone they have said: 

*' Now, it would not do for us to say anything, because there are competitors; others 
would be glad to take this position ; and if we were to be understood by any of those 
who employ us as being unhappy or at all dissatisfied we would soon have to go, aud 
we do not know what else we could do for our families; wo have no trades; we have 
no opportunity besides this to earn a living; we want to maintain our families hon- 
estly, and we want to do that which is regarded as honest at least." 

Without multiplying my words and occupying your time upon the theme which 
has already been so well covered, as I remarked, which you have had the kindness to 
listen to so courteously, and for which, of course, every one must accord his grateful 
recognition, I will conclude by stating the simple fact that the Sabbath is well called 
the bulwark of religious and of civil liberty. As we maintain it, avc give men oppor- 
tunity to learn their duties to their Grod and to their fellow-men. As we sustain the 
Sabbath, we give them the opportunity to reflect and to increase their moral knowl- 
edge as well as other knowledge. As we maintain it, we give them to feel that they 
are men; that they are not serfs ; that they^are not creatures of an autocrat. 

You will recollect the occasion when the Sabbath was occupied in a grand parade, 
and a groat autocrat was most unexpectedly plunged into the very jaws of death, 
brought about by dynamite, soon to close his eyes upon earth. No, these are not 
serfs. These are not as men having no conscience and no families, with no rights; 
but they are our fellow-citizens. They are men employed at wOrk with the breast to 
dauger. 

I certainly have a right to speak in behalf of the railroad men. Thousands of miles 
have those engineers stood right in the front of danger when I have been among the 
passengers. You, gentlemen, have experienced the aamo. I therefore say with groat 



144 SUNDAY REST BILL. 

respect I feel tliafc your interest in this matter is sncli that it needs nothing further 
from us. 

Senator Payne. Let me inquire, is this efforfc at reform in the observance of the 
Sabbath to be confined to the limit of postal deliveries or even the transportation of 
the mails? My observation is that that is only a very small item of interruption of 
the Sabbath. What are you going to do witli the street railways ? 

Mr. Ceapts. We want the National Government to, lead the Avay in securing a 
more restful Sabbath by doing what it can in its own realm to slop needless Sunday 
work. 

Senator Payne. Let me finish my statement. Thousands of the best Christian 
people I have ever known ride upon the street railways on Sundays in going to and 
returning from church. Where people drive to church on Sunday the coachman is- 
kept on duty as on every other day. Instead of living economically as they do in Bos- 
ton, on beans and roast potatoes on Sunday, they have their splendid dinners and a 
whole corps of servants to wait upon them. It seems to me that is as much a viola- 
tion of the peace and order of the Sabbath as the delivery of the mails. 

Mr. Crafts. The point we make is that the Government should take the lead in 
these reforms. We would sweeten the river by salting the springs. The nation is 
now the chief Sabbath-breaker. The Congress of the United States sanctions Sab- 
bath-breaking by its laws allowing Sunday work by its employes in the mail and 
military service. As to horse-cars and Sunday coaching, Toronto is a practical an- 
swer. There the drivers both of cars and coaches share the general rest. People 
walk to church and are all the better for the exercise. ("Sabbath for man," p. 
393 ff. ) 

The Chairman. What is the population of Toronto ? 

Mr. Crafts. One hundred and forty thousand ; but it is an extensive city. 

Senator Payne. It is not so extremely lovely in a moral way in Toronto -as might 
be supposed. I have been there myself. 



STATEMENT OF REV. YATES HICKET. 

Mr. Crafts. Rev. Yates Hickey, the secretary of the International Sabbath As- 
sociation, will next address the committee, and he will be followed by the pastor of 
the Foundry Church of this city, who is the author of a book on the Sabbath, and 
perhaps, of all pastors in this city, is the one who has given this subject the most 
special attention. Mr. Hickey will speak for a few moments and then Mr. Elliott 
will close. 

Mr. Hickey. Mr. Chairman and Senators: I have a document here which contains 
in print much that has been said. The International Sabbath Association had the 
origination of the petition which I hold in my hand in its original form. It was 
originated here in the Post-Office Department when Mr. Key was Postmaster-General, 
and it has been approved in form by all the Postmasters-General since. 

I wish to say simply in outline (and I shall not take the time to fill up) that the 
object of the association which I represent, which occupies as its territory the United 
States and Canada, for the sake of co-operation in this very matter of international 
trains, is, first, to secure by concert of action among owners, managers, employes, and 
patrons the reduction of tlae running of Sunday trains by all lines of travel and trans- 
portation to the limits of necessity and mercy; second, to secure within the same 
limits the observance of the Sabbath by the general and local governments in every 
department of the public service. This action has been contemplated and in large 
part practically worked out in the last fourteen years. I am glad that Mr. Crafts has 
been so full and exhaustive in the outline, which he has not had time to fill up, cov- 
ering all the points, to which I will simply call attention again by way of affirma- 
tion. 

I will first state that railroad managers would welcome restraining measures on 
the part of the Gnveruraeut for economic and other reasons. I will tell you why I 
know thlH to be the case. It has been in God's providence my privilege to work so 
as to secure the confidence and co-operation of railroad men in respect to a very great 
evil, namely, the vicious character of the news department. 

That led me to the inquiry, reciprocally, as to what could be done to restrict Sab- 
bath traffic. Oftentimes a ma,n would say, ''Now that you have helped us about 
this nuisance in getting it out of our way aufl making our road clean and pleasant 
for passengers, what do you think about Sunday running ?" I gave my viev^rs because 
I had then:. "Well," he would say, ''count mo in on that," or he would make sonio 
other characteristic remark such as a railroad man might use, I would say, "Mr. 
So-and-So believes in the same thing you do." Says he," " I am surprised to hear it." 
I say, "He will be surprised to know that you think as he does." They have not 
had rime to conf ;r on the subject. Their views were the same, that they were suf- 
fering personal oi^pression, and they were sympathizing with their fellow-employ6s, 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 145 

but they were hnsj with other matters; they were yet to earn a certain number of 
dollars, so as to make the largest possible dividend, with almost no regard to any 
other result. But the present president of the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company said 
to me in regard to the Sunday question, "We want every wheel stopped on Sunday 
on financial ground alone." That was when he was vice-president, in the auditor's 
department. He said, "I want you to go among our directors and organize a senti- 
ment so that they may lielj) us officers.'' 

Reference has been made to Mr. Ledy aid's letter. I wish Senators would take that 
letter and read it in full. I want no better, no sounder arguments. It is from a lead- 
ing man in railroad management to-day. The letter is as follows : 

Michigan Central Company, 

Detroit, Midi., May 14, 1883. 

To Ihe editors of tlie Mailway Age : 

I have your letter of May 11, relative to the action lately taken by the president 
of the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago Eailway Company, in ordering the sus- 
l)ension of all trains upon the Sabbath, and note your request that I shall reply to 
certain questions as stated in your letter. 

(1) If all railroad companies competing for tiie same class of traffic, from and to 
certain points, were in accord, it would be practicable to a very Jarge extent to 
abandon the running of railway trains on the Sabbath day. The chief difficulty is 
that in these days of sharp competition time has become such an important element 
that if one railroad company should voluntarily cease its traffic for one day during 
the week, while others continue, it vrould lose largely thereby. Yet, for example, 
were each of the trunk lines to absolutely refuse to exchange traffic of any kind with 
their connections from 6 p. m. Saturday until Monday morning it would be a simple 
matter for these trunk lines, as well as for their western connections, to so arrange 
the movement of traffic as to practically do away with the running of Sunday trains. 

(2) There is no question as to the desirability of prohibiting Sunday work on rail- 
ways. The law of nature, to say nothing of the higher law, requires that men should 
have rest one day in seven. Is there any reason why a railroad engineer or con- 
ductor is not entitled to his rest as much as a merchant or manufacturer? 

(3) This company has endeavored to so arrange the runs of its trainmen and en- 
gineei'S as to bring them home on Sunday ; but little can be done in that direction 
without the concerted action on the part of all companies interested in the same 
traffic. 

(4) I do not believe at the end of the year the loss in traffic would be appreciable 
were all Sunday work stopped ; and, in the better morals of the men, the railway 
companies would be abundantly paid for doing away with the work on this day. 

(5) While the public would no doubt at first be dissatisfied at the cessation oi' Sun- 
day work, and would claim injury thereby in the matter of detention to freight and 
delay to mails, it is difficult to see how much injury could really exist Vv^ere the 
practice of doing away with Sunday work made uniform on all roads. As an exam- 
ple, at one time it was thought necessary for each one of the Omaha roads to run a 
train from Chicago Sundays; after awhile this was changed so that a train left each 
Sunday on one only of the three roads. This caused at first some dissatisfaction, but 
it 800U passed away, and the result of the experiment, so far as I have been able to 
Jearn, was entirely satisfactory. ^, 

Looking at the question from either a moral or economical stand-point, no candid 
person can uphold the running of trains on Sunday. What is there in the essence of 
a railroad company different from any other business which will require an exception 
to be made of it and its employes to work when others are allowed and expected to 
rest? 

The elTect of this constant and never-ending work is not only injurious to the men 
themselves but most deplorable to their families. If it is true, as Lord Bacon says, 
I hat a man who has a family has given a hostage to fortune, it is equally true that he 
.should be allowed to live at least pa.rt of his time with those for whom he has to care, 
and certainly should have at least one day in every seven, which under our system of 
railway labor he can not have, to devote to his own family and private matters. 

Tv» liiing about a cessation of Sunday work now would be much less difficult than 
it would have been a few years since. All over the country railway conqmnies are 
grouiiiiig themselves into associations for the exchange of traffic, the main1«;nance of 
rates, and the better carrying out of agreements, such as, for example, the trunk line 
committee, the joint executive committee, the Southwest<!rn Railway Association, 
and many others. If these companies can come together on short notice to arran^^je 
for any and ail ([uostions of mutual interest, it would bo a simple matter, were this 
f[uestion of Sntubiy work proi)er!y considered, to bring aVjout a reform in ti)e same. 

I am glad you liave taken the matter up, fori believe if it is pr<;sented to our man- 
agers in its bcot light, whether from a moral or economical stand-point, a few mo- 

S. Mis. 43 10 



146 SUNDAY RESl* BILL. 

ment'B reflection will show to eac"h of tliein tliat we are all committing a fearfdl mis- 
take in allowing the continuance and rapid growth of this Sunday Work. 
Yours, truly, 

S. B. LfibYASD, 

President. 

Eeference has been made to the petition of Vandert)llt's engineers. A more thor- 
ough paper, coming from the workingmen's stand-point, I never saw. 

The Chairman. Have you a copy of the petition! 

Mr. HiCKEY. It is here in Mr. Craft's hook, ^'The Sabbath for Man." 

The CHAIIlMA^7. We should like to have it appear in the record. 

Mr. HicKEY. I will give it from Mr. Craft's book. It is as follows : 

'* A few years since some 450 of his locomotive engineers petitioned Mr. William H. 
Vanderbilt for ' the cessation of Sunday labor.' After pointing out how Sunday run- 
ning had become ' a great hardship,' they continue : ' We have borne this grievance 
patiently, hoping every succeeding year that it would decrease. We are willing to 
submit to any reasonable privation, mental or physical, to assist the officers of your 
company to achieve a financial triumph; but after a long and weary service, we do not 
see any signs of relief, and we are forced to come to you with our trouble, and most 
respectfully ask yoa to relieve us from Sunday labor, so far as it is in your power to 
do so. Our objections to Sunday labor are: 

^' (1) This never-ending labor ruins onr health and prematurely makes us feel Worn 
out like old men, and we are sensible of our inability to perform our duty as well 
when wo work to an excess. 

"(2) That the customs of all civilized countries, as well as all lawfe, hurnan and 
Divine, recognize Sunday as a day of rest and recuperation ; and notwithstanding 
intervals of rest might bo arranged for us on other days than Sunday, we feel that by 
so doing we would bo forced to exclude ourselves from all church, family, and social 
privileges that other citizens enjoy. 

" (.3) Nearly all of the undersigned have children that they desire to have educated 
in everything that will tend to make them good men and women, and we can not 
help but see that our example in ignoring the Sabbath day has a very demoralizing 
influence upon them, 

" (4) Because we believe the best interests of the company we serve, as well as ours, 
will be promoted thereby, and because we believe locomotive engineers should oc- 
cupy as high social and religious positions as men in any other calling. We know 
the question will be considered: How can this Sunday work be avoided with the im- 
mense and constantly increasing traflio? We have watched this matter for the past 
twenty years. We have seen it grow from its infancy Until it has arrived at its now 
gigantic proportions, from one train on the Sabbath until we now have about thirty 
each way; and we do not hesitate in saying that we can do as much work in six days, 
with the seventh for rest, as is now done. It is a fact observable by all connected 
with the immediate running of freight trains that oh Monday freight is compara- 
tively light; Tuesday it strengthens a little, and keeps increasing until Saturday, 
and Sundays are the heaviest of the week. The objection may be offered that if your 
lines stop the receiving points from other roads will be blocked up. In reply, we 
would most respectfully suggest that when the main lines do not run tributaries 
would only be too glad to follow the good example. The question might also arise, If 
traffic is suspended twenty-four hours, will not the company lose one-seventh of its 
profits? In answer, we will pledge our experience, health, and strength that at the 
end of the year our employers will not lose one cent, but, on the contrary, will be the 
gainers financially. 

'' Our reasons are these : At present, the duties of your locomotive engineers are in- 
cessant, day after day, night succeeding night, Sunday and all, rain or shine, with 
all the fearful inclemencies of a vigorous winter to contend with* The great strain 
of both mental and physical faculties constantly employed has a tendency in time to 
impair the requisites so necessary to make a good engineer. Troubled in mind, jaded 
and worn out in body, the engineer can not give his duties that attention they should 
have in order to best advance his employers' interests^ We venture to say, not on this 
broad continent, in any branch of business or traffic, can be found any class in the 
samp position as railroad men. 

" Tliey arc severed from associations that all hold most dear, debarred from the Op- 
portunity of worship, that tribute man owes to his God ; witnessing all those pleas- 
ures accorded to others^ which are the only oases in the deserts of this life, and with 
DO prospect of relief. We ask you to aid us. 

"Give us the Sabbath for rest after our week of laborious duties, and we pledge 
you that, with a system invigorated by a season of repose, by a brain eased and 
cleared by hours of relaxation, We can go to Work with more energy, more_ mental 
and physical force, and can and will accomplish more work and do it better, if possi- 



SUNDAY EEST BILL. 147 

ble.iusix clays than we can now do in seven. We can give you ten clays in six if 
yon require it, if vre can only look foru^ard to a certain period of rest. In conclu- 
sion, we hope and trust that, in conjunction with other gentlemen of the trunk lines 
leading to the sea-hoard, yon will be able to accomplish something that will amelio- 
rate our condition," 

All those matters are pertiugRt to-day, and they will remain pertinent as long as 
the human race stands. 

I refer again to the fact that our petition was formulated in great part in the Post- 
OtUce Department here, and that it has been thus far approved by the Postmaster- 
Geueral, I saw Mr. Dickinson for the first time this morning, and I hope to secure 
his thorough approval of the matter. 

Sunday mails and Sunday trains go further than has been suggested; they encour- 
age evil habits in our people. I was in the directors' room of the Pennsylvania Eail- 
road for an hour and a quarter with the committee on incidental business, to whom 
the jiresident referred this matter for action, and which resulted in the calling of a 
conference of the four trunk lines. That conference was about to be held when the 
disturbance of the Baltimore and Ohio with the Pennsylvania road took place and 
interrupted the matter. This makes me say again that the railroad men would wel- 
come pressure from the Government in order that such interruptions and delays 
might not occur, so that it woujd not be a mere matter of personal taste with them 
whether they would come together and confer or not, because when they are at log- 
gerheads on business matters they are compelled to run Sunday trains in competition. 

In the progress of my work for the International Sabbath Association, to ascertain 
whether a cessation of Sunday trains would be feasible, I went to see the Postmaster- 
General ; I went to see the President ; I went to see Colonel Scott ; I went to see Mr. 
Jewett, of the Erie road ; I went to see Mr. Vanderbilt, and others. I told them that 
it would be feasible if the roads would only unite in making the reform ; that it would 
be a saving to them ; and yet they keep on running these trains at a loss. Colonel 
Scott asked me what kind of a law I proposed to bring to bear upon them. I said, 
"The diviue law, sir." He asked me what kind of an organization we would require. 
I said, " Nothing but a committee to get you to attend to your own business.'' He 
said, ''We can not do anything; and about that diviue law, I am afraid I am not as 
familiar with it as you are." I replied, ''The divine law is simply this: 

" ' If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy 
day ; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable ; and ahalt 
honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking 
thine own word : Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord ; and I will cause thee to 
ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy 
father ; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. ' " 

He said, " Our people are making no dividends. " I said, "There are dividends in 
it, for the Lord said, ' I will feed thee.'" He said, "That is what the stockholders 
want, for there is no such wreckable and destructible property in the world as rail- 
roads ;" and we all know that to be the case from the experience in 1877 and other 
experiences which we have had. 

Our association have always labored and will continue to labor for a Christian 
Sabbath, for it alone can bind the conscience of men. This conference is now on the 
tapis between the four great trunk lines, but there is something more than that 
needed. 

There is something needed through the action of this committee and the Senate 
and the Congress of the United States to bring about a reform in the matter of Sun- 
day mails, for that question is so dovetailed and interlinked with the question of San- 
day railroad trains that it is impossible to separate them. Mr. Green, who is the 
contracting party of the Pennsylvania Eailroad with the Government, said to me, 
" What are you doing about the Sunday mail ?" I said, " We are doing all we can." 
I knew he was opposed to our doing anything. Said he, " You will make a musS of 
it; you are trying to do too much." But finally, after I told him what Mr. Cum- 
mings, the president of the Girard Bank, said, he replied, " I never thought of that; 
I guei^-s it was so near my nose I did not see it. All right, give me your hand ; I am 
going down to Washington Monday. These papers will come before the Postmaster- 
General, and perhaps we will save money by it." 

Tins question of Sabbath observance, which was tabooed ton years ago and nothing 
said about it except by a sneer, which was relegated to the corner, has been brought 
cmt u)itil it is the foremost subject in economics and in morals in this country to-day, 
audit is well worthy of your attention. So, with the utmost respect and great thankr 
fulness of heart to you, xMr. Chairman and Senators, for this hearing, I will Himi)ly re- 
iterate the ])rayer oliered every day for this good work, trusting to Him wlu) <loetb 
wondrons things— that is, our blessed Lord, "who kuoweth whether thou art como to 
the kingdom for such a time aathis." 



148 SUNDAY EEST BILL. 



STATEMENT OF REV. GEORGE ELLIOTT. 

Mr. Elliott. Mr. Chairman and Senators : I have hut little to add to what has heen 
said. The last words of Mr. Hickey, I think, should he in our thought, that just at 
])refieiit there is doubtless a larger interest in the question of the revival of the Chris- 
tian's Sabbath and its stricter observance than ever before. Those of us vv-ho are ac- 
quainted with the theological side of literature know that in the last half dpzen years 
more books have been written and there has been more stimulation of thonj!:bt among 
Christian x^eople with regard to the obligation of the Lord's day for observiiuce, and 
also with regard to questions connected with legislation on the subject, than ever 
before. 

As to the relation of the regulation of the public service to the general question of 
a larger observance of the Sabbath by the peox)le, I wish to call the attention of the 
committee to the fact that in the earliest legislation on the subject, in the Roman 
legislation, the observance of the Sabbath began by making it a dies non in public 
matters only. The first law of Constantine allowed agricultural labor, possibly 
partly because the pagan population were pagans ; but, as we find in the Roman In- 
stitutes, the principal prohibitions of the earlier laws related simply to the public 
service, to the courts of justice, to the issuing of summonses, and to all the depart- 
ments of the government. From the very beginning, Sabbath observance commenced 
with the recognition by government in all j)ublic matters of the Sabbath day. 

There is another phase of this question which I should like to have rest on your 
thought, that you may consider it further in committee with reference to legislation. 
I feU happy, in looking upon the members of the committee, to believe that, there is 
a coi^siderable amount of Puritan blood roxjresented in it. In the Senator from Iowa 
(Mr. Wilson) I am sure I see traces of Scotch-Irish ancestry, which I am proud to 
boast, and in the other members of the committee I am sure there is much of the 
spirit of the Anglo-Saxon and the feeling of the Puritan. Oar country has been drift- 
ing, I believe, away from its Saxon traditions. 

It has been, more or less, in later years, in its social manners and customs, modeled 
after the nations of the Contintmt of Europe. Now that the American spirit has re- 
vived, there is no institution which is so vitally connected with the genuine Puritan 
spirit which lies behind all ordered liberty, which lies behind all calm self-govern- 
ment, as the Christian Sabbath, the weekly day of rest. 

This is an economic question as well. Mr. John Stuart Mill, who certainly had no 
prejudice in favor of religious observances, declared as an economist that laborers 
must get the same pay for seven days as for six. The discussion of the limitation of 
the hours of labor to ten and eight hours has always been closely connected with the 
question of Sabbath-day's rest. In a debate in the English House of Parliament Lord 
Macaulay distinctly connected the two questions, and" declared, what I believe to be 
true, that this day of rest among English-speaking peoples, observed more strictly 
true than elsewhere among the peoples of the globe during all the centuries past, 
has not been a losfc day, but a day gained. 

David Hume, in his "Essay on Luxury," says that he would not expect the pro- 
duction of a yard of cotton cloth in a nation where ethics had been neglected o¥ for- 
gotten. It can not be expected that a nation will have large economic prosperity 
v/hich does not observe the Sabbath, because the larger tastes and the higher refine- 
ments and the more complex interests of civilization which lie back of economic pros- 
perity are connected with moral feelings and moral sentiments and moral aspirations. 
I thank you, gentlemen, for the hearing you have given ns to-day- 



STATEMENT OF MRS. CHARLES ST. JOHN. 

Mrs. St. John. Mr. Chairman and honorable members of this body, after duo con- 
sideration of the fatal influences upon the physical, mental, and spiritual nature of 
man, owing to the deprivation of rest on the Sabbath day, there appears atiothcr so- 
rlotui question to my mind worthy the attention of this honorable committee. 

Our Government being a government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, must needs watch with great care the insidious influence that reaches the ooin- 
mon people with a tendency towards educatiug a laxity of respect for the constitu- 
tional law, or in sustaining a fundamental principle founded on God's law and recog- 
nized by the Constitution of the United States. 

If the governing power be careless in sustaining law, does it not weaken the re- 
spect for all law by the power that creates the Government? To illustrate this point, 
take tbe promiscuous crowd of strangers from foreign shores who come to America 
without knowledge of our common laws,^ How shall we be able to educate them as 
law-abiding citizens, and to shun all violence against law, especially riots, or even 



SUNDAY REST BILL. 149 

anarcliisni and communism, wlien at the same time one of onr most sacred laws, 
grautiuj;- protectlou to the institutions of this country, is continually violated by the 
governing power and the people ? 

Tii;5 privilege granted through State to mnnicipal jiower of desecrating the Sab- 
bath in open sales of liquor in several States is one point of argument made against 
all law by the anarchists themselves, that the American citizen does not iiave respect 
for Sunday lav,-, or else he would not grant the violation of State ]aw to such extent. 

Take the rising man in embryo — the boy of to-day. How shall we be able to teach 
him that the law for x^i^otectiog the purity of the ballot-box must be enforced and 
respected, while at the same time another law, even more sacred, may be continually 
vioUited with impunity? 

Would there not be an evil tendency to construe to the mind of foreigner or Araer- 
;.cau boy that all law was not sacred? 

We claim that to lessen the respect for one law in the mind of a citizen means to 
lessen respect for all law, to a certain extent. The danger arising from such conclu- 
sion is the tendency to weaken all moral power necessary to the health of society 
and to the safety and perpetuity of our Government. ''Righteousness exalteth a 
nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." 

With gratefulness wo appreciate the favor of a hearing granted by this honorable 
committee. 

In behalf of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union we return thanks 
to this honorable body and to Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts and these eminent clergymen for 
the able argument made in behalf of Sabbath-day observance. 

The Chairman. There is no bill before the committee. The hearing has been upon 
numerous petitions, 21,000 and upwards at the present session and a very large num- 
ber at the last Congress. If any gentleman interested in this matter will formulate 
a bill, or if different gentlemen will formulate different bills and forward them to the 
committee, it would be of assistance in the way of enabling us to reduce these sug- 
gestions to a practical form, so that they can be better coa3i(iered. The hearing is 
now closed. 



INDEX 



Page. 

Batcliam,Mrs. J. C, remarks by 21,70,103 

letter from 130 

Conrad, Rev. F. W. , remarks by 39 

Crafts, Rev. Wilbur F., remarks by 2,116,132 

Diveu , General S. S. , remarks by 26 

Elliott, Rev. George, remarks by 44,148 

Federation of Labor, indorsement by , 127 

Fernley, Rev. T. A., remarks by 141 

Gibbous, James, Cardinal, letter from 18 

Haskell, Rev. S.M., remarks by 102 

Hickey , Rev. Yates, remarks by 144 

Hunt, C.R., remarks by 72 

Johnson, Dr. Herriek, remarks by 50 

Jones, Prof. A. T. , remarks by 56, 73, 114 

Ledyard, H. B., president of Michigan Central Railway, letter from 10, 145 

Lewis, Rev. A. fl., remarks by 41,63,102 

Locomotive engineers, petition of 113 

Lord, Hon. G. P., remarks by 25 

New York Sabbath Committee, report of 18 

Nice, Rev. G. P., remarks by 142 

Payne, Rev. C. H., remarks by 54 

Religion and free public schools, text of joint resolution j)roposing amendment 

to the Constitution 93 

Schade, Louis, remarks by 115 

Stearns, J. N., remarks by 68 

Stevenson , Rev. T. P. , remarks by 30, 63 

St. John, Mrs. Charles, remarks by 148 

Sunday rest bill, text of 1 

Sunderland, Rev. Byron, remarks by „ 51,67 

Vincent. James, remarks by 127 

Wilson, Prof. D. B., remiirks by 67,115 

Wolff, John B., remarks by 56, 105 

Wood, John B., remarks by 104 



151 



